


Secrets And Lies

by Tristan_Shelton



Series: Secrets And Lies [1]
Category: Pretty Little Liars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-04-22 11:31:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4833743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tristan_Shelton/pseuds/Tristan_Shelton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four girls attempt to survive as they are stalked by an anonymous attacker, after the death of their group's leader. Everything they get, the anonymous person takes away two things and it's only going downhill from there as they have to explore the fantastical aspects of a world they didn't know existed, and learn how to cope in a life without their leader.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Popular In Life And Death

Prologue

Every town has that perfect person. The one with the perfect grades, the perfect body, the perfect looks, the perfect family, everything. Most of them live their entire lives in the lap of luxury with everything already planned before they’re even born. But what if not all of them made it to adulthood?

What if not all of them made it past 15?

It had been a dark and rainy night on September 1st, 2012 in Briarwood, Pennsylvania. It was the last weekend until school started back up and the four girls and Alex were going into their sophomore year of high school finally. It was supposed to be the best years of their lives. Years that one of them would miss . . .

They had all been hanging out in the mother-in-law house that resided in Rachel Watson’s back yard. Of course, Alex had snuck a bottle of vodka from his parent’s liquor cabinet. They had passed it around, everybody taking a swig (though Rachel was the hardest to convince, being as she was the Virgin Mary of the group).

Some ridiculous Bruno Mars song was blasting in the background as the group all laughed about some stupid video Gabriella had found. For them this was just another night. Nothing special. Little did they know that soon it would be the anniversary of somebody’s death.

First member of the group is Gabriella Moody. The least popular girl in the clique. The least noticed, the one that isn’t as attractive as the others, isn’t that skinny or fit, just another dog Alex liked to carry around on a leash. They were his pets, there to serve him and only him. And Gabriella was the most fun to play with.

Next we have Rachel Watson. God, she’d probably count out a billion dollars in pennies if Alex asked her to. She had her brave moments but those were quickly shot down by Alex if he didn’t like it, but he sometimes liked her courage and let those moments go unpunished.

Next we have Anna Romano. Future World Cup winner for whatever Soccer league she goes into. The perfect fit body from all of the exercise, and gorgeous looks to top it off. Her and Alex became friends first so most people see her as being his favorite. They all knew Alex had a favorite and they all thrived to be his favorite especially Anna but he would never tell them who it was. She’s like him in ways except she’s not a total bitch. She’s independent and works hard to keep her social status and keeps her career set out for her.

The last of the four girls. Laura Davidson. Let’s put it this way. She’s Gold when it comes to popularity. Almost the top of all of her classes, great career set out for her as a lawyer, Vice President of Student Government, and with a rich family. Now next to Alex, she’s just something laying there to cast a shadow. She’s gold but he’s platinum, she’s almost at the top of all of her classes, he is at the top, she has a great career set out for her, he could live his life without working a day, She’s the VP, he’s the President, she’s rich, he’s richer. It’s a constant competition between the two. She begins doing Yoga, he’s been doing it for a month now. She gets a 90 on the Math Final, he got a 110. But at least she has the title of second best.

Lastly, Alex. Alex VanLinor is #1 at everything. President of Student Government, top of his class, so rich that he throws out Prada like its newspaper. Healthier than a horse, more fit than Anna, and absolutely brilliant and popular. The people at high school practically worship the ground he walks on. Laura has a love/hate relationship with him but she’s maintaining being #2 popularity-wise by being in the clique. He’s perfect but there’s one downside. He’s a total bitch. A complete bully. But everybody puts up with it because they feel like it’s an honor for him to even breathe the same air as them. He even has special nicknames for people that he loves to use over and over again until they believe it themselves.

Well, somebody got sick of Alex and his constant bullying and on that night that would stay fresh in the minds of everyone in Briarwood, they decided they were going to act on those feelings.

These girls all have something to hide. Especially after Alex disappeared. How do I know? Well that’s a secret I’ll never tell. - A

Chapter 1, Popular in Life and Death

It’s been four days since Alex has gone missing. All of the girls are at a loss as to what they should do. This was their ringleader, ruthless and cruel as he was, he was still their ringleader. Anna thinks this is just another stunt of his, he loved to toy with people. Laura simply seems like she doesn’t care. They never did have the best friendship and everyone knows that. Gabriella pretends to be remorseful about it but on the inside she feels relieved. Rachel hasn’t talked since she heard the word Missing escape one of the officer’s mouth. Somehow, Rachel saw underneath all of the cruelty and bitchiness that was Alex VanLinor. She saw all of the good (and there wasn’t much) in him. The good that was buried deep. Like really damn deep.

On the fifth day of his disappearance the girls were taken into questioning. They would have been taken in the second day but the parents asked for a few days for the girls to let it soak in since they were so close to him.

“Hello girls, I’m Detective Marlin and I’d like to ask you about a few questions about your friend Alex’s disappearance.”

The officer seemed like he spent most of his time in a gym. He was well built, tall, and had a deep tan. He was rather attractive but not even Laura was thinking about that. They were all still in shock in one form or another. Rachel’s thought process had turned to slush. All she could think of was Where is Alex? Laura was silently praying that wherever he was he was safe but would stay gone. Anna wanted her friend to come back. Gabriella wasn’t sure how she felt. She was absolutely conflicted. It was like she was on a rollercoaster that was stuck at the top and she was just waiting for the second when it would all come crashing down. The girls had been dismissed from the first week back of school except for Laura and Anna. Laura had to keep herself at the top no matter what was going on in her life and Anna needed to be able to maintain good grades to stay in soccer.

“Death.” Laura stated firmly.

“Excuse me?” Detective Marlin asked.

“Death. Alex isn’t missing. He’s dead. He’s too smart to get kidnapped and too much of a spotlight whore to leave the attention for any amount of time.”

Rachel could barely process everything Laura said. She could only comprehend the word Alex. Gabriella and Anna were in awe that Laura had said that. They both knew for a fact that when Alex got back he would find out somehow and she would be out of the group. They both loved Laura and would be sad to see her go but they couldn’t say anything or they’d be walking out behind her.

“Well Ms. Davidson, we don’t have a body or any sufficient evidence to prove that he’s deceased so until then this is still a missing person’s case. So any further comments like that from you will result in you getting a solo interrogation.” Detective Marlin said with a smirk as he saw the aggravated look on Laura’s face.

“Anyways. We have to question all of you about what happened the night that Alex disappeared. You will get your turns to tell the story from your point of view and there will be no interruptions from any of you while one of you talks.” He looked at Laura at that last part.

“Who wants to go first?”

None of the girls raised their hands or spoke up.

“How about you Gabriella? What do you remember from that night?”

Gabriella shifted uncomfortably in her chair and then began to speak.

“I was never with Alex that day until the sleepover at Rachel’s House. I remember going there and I heard him talking to someone in the Mother-In-Law house that Rachel’s grandma lives in but when I got there he was alone.”

The detective was scribbling down something very fast onto a notepad as he paid close attention to what Gabriella was saying.

“I was probably just imagining it though.” She hastily said realizing that if Alex found out she had heard him up to something he’d be pissed at her for eavesdropping. “Well anyways after that I just went inside and waited for the other girls. That’s all I remember.”

They all knew she was lying. Something had happened that night that she didn’t want anyone to know. Detective Marlin raised an eyebrow and cocked his head at her. He wrote down some notes that seemed pretty small compared to what she said.

“Anna, you next. I need everything that happened that involved Alex on that night. It could really help the case we’re building. If you guys gave us the full honest truth today we could probably get a lead twice as fast.” At the word truth he glared at Gabriella. He knew damn well that she was lying.

“Alex and I played a few games of soccer. He said that I needed to win the upcoming game because he couldn’t have a loser ruining his reputation.”

“It seemed like he bullied you guys a lot.”

“We’re used to it. Were used to it.” Anna said.

“Well then, proceed with your story Anna.”

“While we were playing soccer he had gotten a call. When he looked at his phone screen I saw something I had never seen before. He was scared.”

A heavy silence fell upon the entire room as the girls let that sink in and Detective Marlin began writing down something that was a lot longer than what Anna had said. Anna cleared her throat and broke the silence.

“After he took the call and walked away, I went back inside my house to get us some water and when I came out he was gone. I looked for him a bit and called him a few times but I eventually gave up and went inside to take a shower. Then I didn’t see him until we all got together for the sleepover.”

“Thank you Anna. If you and Gabriella want, you can leave.” Detective Marlin said after ripping out his second page of notes.

“No, we’re staying right here.” Anna said and Gabriella just mmhm-ed in agreement.

“Very well then. Laura, you next.”

“Well, my day started out normally, I woke up, did my make-up, brushed my hair and braided it, got dressed, and brushed my teeth, then grabbed an apple and a protein shake and drove to school. I went to my first peri-”

“No Laura, not your day. Your interactions with Alex that day.”

She let out a heavy sigh indicating that she wanted nothing more than to stop talking about Alex. He wasn’t even here and he was getting more attention than the sneezing panda.

“Alex and I got our school schedules together that day. We have 3rd period chemistry and 7th period Gym together this year. After we got our schedules we went our separate ways and I next saw him when we went jogging together. I had my earphones in and about halfway in I looked up and saw that he was gone, and there was only a lingering scent of his cologne like he had left recently. And like the other girls I hadn’t seen him again until the sleepover.”

He had written down less than half of what he had written for Anna and Gabriella. Like he didn’t really care what she had to say. Anna, Gabriella, and Rachel couldn’t really blame him, she seemed (and mostly was) a stuck up, self-centered person, who couldn’t care less about Alex and his wellbeing. Which was true for the most part,

“Lastly, Rachel. Recount the events that occurred between you and Alex that day.”

Rachel looked up and stared the detective in the eyes. She looked so broken. Like she didn’t know what to do and she kept muttering the same word; “Missing”.

“Rachel, if you want us to get a lead on Alex’s disappearance you’re going to need to tell us everything that happened with you and Alex that day.”

Rachel just stared blankly off into the distance like she didn’t know what to say. Or couldn’t say anything.

“She hasn’t fully spoken since Alex disappeared. Don’t expect to get anything out of her.” Gabriella said, her sentence coming out harsher than planned.

“Well then, I’m going to take this information back to the station, if Rachel decides to speak up call the station and I’ll be down to interview her. Alone.”

* * *

Gabriella slowly walked into her house. She felt sort of exhausted after the interview. Like she was emotionally drained.

“What did they call you in for?” Her mom had been waiting at the door for her when she got home.

“They were questioning us about Alex. When we had seen him throughout the day, if we knew anything about his disappearance. That kind of stuff.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I just had to talk about it for two hours the only thing I want to talk about is my bed. Goodnight”

“It’s 2 in the afternoon.”

She giggled at her mom’s confusion and continued to walk up the stairs and into her bedroom. She quickly changed into some pajamas and sunk into her bed. Just as she was drifting into sleep, her phone went off. Beep beep.

She unlocked her phone and saw that she had a new message.

Night Night, don’t let your lies bite. -A

* * *

Those past two hours had been severely frustrating, stressful, and emotionally exhausting. Anna needed to clear her head. And she only knew one way to do that. Run. She put on a pair of sweatpants and a sports bra when she got home, jammed her earphones in, put her playlist on shuffle, and took off not knowing where she was going or if she was coming back. She was blindly running she was feeling a flurry of emotions. She was angry, sad, lonely, frustrated, and confused. Where was Alex? Why isn’t he home yet? She just didn’t understand.

She felt like the whole world was standing still while she was spinning rapidly. She never realized it before but without Alex she was absolutely lost. He kept her motivated to do sports, he was actually the reason she got into sports. Even when they were 5 years old he was still in control. He made her get in his backyard and kick around that soccer ball until her leg muscles gave out.

He was stronger than all of them combined. He truly was the glue that held them together. Their missing puzzle piece. And now that he was gone she could already feel them falling apart. She couldn’t lose Gabriella, Laura, and Rachel. Aside from Alex, they were her best friends. She was trying to theorize. She was more of a jock than a brain so she wasn’t doing very well and after an hour she decided to go back home but when she looked up she was in the middle of the forest.

She whipped out her phone and looked up her location on Google Maps. She was 5 miles from her house.

I made it this far why don’t I just keep going and never look back. I could make it. I have like 20 bucks on me, I could buy a charger for my phone and get a part-time job and move from motels. Escape this town and all of its drama. All of its mystery and all of its lies.

CRACK

A twig snapped to her left and she heard some leaves rustling. She looked over but saw nothing. Now she was spooked and she was five miles away from her house. Might as well keep going. And she did. She started running again and didn’t look back . . . until her phone went off.

Badum Badum

She had a text.

You can run but you can’t hide from me. –A

* * *

Laura had gotten home with a smug look on her face. Something her mom didn’t expect. She knew that Alex wasn’t Laura’s favorite person in the world but she figured she’d be a little upset about Alex’s disappearance. Alex wasn’t really her favorite person either. All he brought about was drama and secrets and lying. He wasn’t welcome in her house anymore after-. She didn’t like to think about it.

Laura walked upstairs and sat on her bed and looked around. All she remember now was Alex. Them binging 3 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy together while eating enough candy to give them diabetes. All of them hanging out in her room taking pictures and trying out new outfits that Alex had bought for them. Alex taking Taylor’s phone and them going through her messages.

There were times when he wasn’t a royal bitch. When he seemed almost human. Normal even. When he was nice to her and let himself go. Just let himself hang out in pajamas and sleep in and stay up late.

She layed on her back and stared up at the top of the four poster bed. Her, Alex, and the girls had all signed it last year and had put a group picture directly above it. She couldn’t help but grin at that one. That was fun night

FLASHBACK

The girls all giggled as Alex put on makeup. It was nights like these where he was fun and loved to joke around like this. Most of the time he was being bitchy or trying to degrade them but he was giving them compliments and treating them greatly. Even Gabriella who was his favorite tree to break twigs off of.

Alex got on the bed and as their natural instinct they followed him. He grabbed five sharpies off of Laura’s night stand and handed one to each girl. He got on his knees and reached up to the ceiling of the bed’s canopy and wrote something. They all looked up.

Alex VanLinor

So they all followed suit and signed their names and then Alex whipped out his phone and began taking at least a hundred pictures of them. Rachel ducked to avoid the camera, Anna just posed, Gabriella didn’t notice, and Laura rolled her eyes but couldn’t suppress her smirk. They all bundled up together on the bed – Alex in the middle because he was always the center of attention – and took a picture. It was times like this where they didn’t feel like Kings and Queens. Where they didn’t have to maintain an appearance or attitude. Where they were 100% themselves.

END OF FLASHBACK

She took a deep breath in and out of her mouth and then turned over and buried her face in her pillow. She sat for a minute and then it began. It was one tear and then two more and then three more and then it was like somebody had turned on a high pressure water hose from inside her eye sockets. Her body was shaking and she could already feel her pillow soaking up all of the tears from the amount of water leaking from her eyes. She spent too much time bottling things up but now that Alex was gone and might be dead she couldn’t handle anything else. She was completely and utterly broken.

Boop Boop, Boop Boop

She had a text. She wiped her eyes with the sleeves of her sweater and unlocked her phone.

Oh sob Laura! I guess you’re all alone now. It’s okay, you’ll always have me! –A

* * *

Rachel was numb. Her entire mind was shut down. There was only one thing she could process. Alex was gone and she might never see him again. It was her best friend. Her other half. She could always tell that she was his favorite because he was a completely different person when he was with her. He was changed. He wasn’t a horrible person. He was kind, and understanding, and would listen to whatever she needed to tell him and he wouldn’t judge her. He’d done so much for her.

There was this one boy in their freshman year named Austin Crowl that had told everybody at school that she had slept with him. Naturally, Alex ruined him. If you ask somebody who Austin Crowl is now they’d immediately stiffen and walk away because he literally disappeared. Some say that he ran away, some say that Alex murdered him but nobody ever talks about it anymore because that was the one thing that had made them really scared of Alex.

In her room she had a large sky blue tote with four small boxes in it. One was painted with a red A on it, the next had a Pink cursive L, another had a sloppy Green G on it, and the last had a pale pink cursive A on it. They were all boxes of mementos from the others in the group. She loved them so much. They were more her family than her real family was.

She gently picked up Alex’s box – The one with the pale pink A on it – as thought it was made of glass because to her it was. It was everything of Alex she had. Every birthday card he’d given her, every little note they’d passed in class, the notebook they had written in to talk to each other on the long boat ride so her parents couldn’t see their texts.

She gently lifted the lid of the box and pulled out the first thing she saw. It was the note they had been passing in class in their second semester last year.

Could this lecture be any more boring? Why should we care what the product of B and Z is?

You actually need this stuff for your future

Yes, because coefficients are going to be a job requirement

Oh, like you’re going to have to work a day in your life

Probably not. So, I hear that you actually have a boyfriend. Never thought the little virgin mary would actually date somebody.

That’s a total rumor. I don’t date and you know that. My mom would kill me anyways.

Probably. We should stop passing these before Mrs. Lucas catches us, she’ll lose her shit.

Her tears fell down her face and onto the paper as she folded it up and stuck it back in the box. She missed him so much. It hasn’t even been a week yet. She curled up into fetal position and let the tears pour out.

“Alex, please come home.”

Her phone went off.

Dinggggg

Miss me Rae? You’ll see me soon. –A

* * *

A blood curling scream rang throughout Briarwood, Pennsylvania at 7:39 AM. It was September 7th, also known as the day that Alex VanLinor died.

In front of the VanLinor manor is their large rose garden behind a set of iron gates with the VanLinor family crest on it. A black hooded figure pushes the gates open after putting in the all-too familiar code.

The shoes were practically silent against the pavement as the figure made their way up to the mansion. A soft knock on the door. No answer. A louder one. This time it was a series of loud, fast knocks. When the hooded figure didn’t even hear feet coming to the door they got impatient.

The hooded figure walked over to the entrance and got into the car. They really loved making an entrance. The car was thrown into full speed and sped through the gates and up the lawn to the front door. When the car went up the stairs and hit the double doors they swung open and one flew off the hinges while the other hung limply off one hinge. They smirked evilly under the black mask and backed up a little bit before getting out of the car.

The car door opened and out stepped that black hooded figure. They slammed the door closed and walked up to the front door. Once there they lightly knocked on the hanging door. The intruder could hear soft whispers upstairs. He knew they were here, which made the end of this little game oh so fun. The intruder began to walk up the stairs with an agonizingly slow pace that was loaded with anticipation. Once the intruder reached the top of the stairs they raised a glove hand and lightly pushed on the door that had the name “Alex” printed on it in foam letters.

The door didn’t move. He thought locking it would do anything. The hooded intruder lifted one of their legs and slammed on the door with it. It was a flimsy wooden door that practically shattered at the force of the powerful leg. The intruder walked in and saw the tall teenager sitting on his bed with a butcher knife. The intruder smirked behind the mask. This was going to be fun.

The boy launched off of his bed and attempted to stab the intruder but they side stepped him, causing him to lose his balance and fall. While he was trying to get up the attacker went and grabbed the knife that the teenager had dropped when he fell. He got up and ran back into his room knocking over the hooded figure. This did nothing but made them stumble and aggravate them. This was their game and the boy wasn’t going to be doing anything to interfere with the game ending.

The attacker grabbed the boy by his hair and smashed his head into the vanity mirror. The glass shattered and flew everywhere. He began bleeding from his head but continued to fight. He pushed back against the attacker but was dizzy and fell against his dresser, knocking it over and taking out two of his bed posts. He took a deep breath and regained his composure, he wasn’t losing nearly as much blood as he thought. But he was still losing blood and the intruder was fit and ready to kill him. He tried to run but the attacker grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and yanked him back, knocking him to the floor and knocking the wind out of him. They picked him up and pushed him into the staircase.

On contact, he broke the railing and went tumbling down the stairs leaving a blood trail behind him. They had already won but they were still playing with their food. He was on his hands and knees at the bottom of the stairs trying to breathe properly. When the attacker got to the bottom of the stairs, the boy hadn’t noticed and the attacked put their foot on his side and kicked him over. He was weak but he was still fighting for his life. He got up and stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed a knife.

The attacker walked in and grabbed one of the large knives from the knife block. They were no longer playing, they were pissed because he wasn’t supposed to be fighting back. He should have died when he was thrown down the stairs. But now this attacker was done. The teenager tossed the knife at the attacker. It brushed their shoulder and lightly tore the hoodie. The color drained from the boy’s face. He knew it was over, he was dead. But he still had to try to fight for his life.

The attacked walked towards him and slashed the knife in the air. It cut his chest and he began dripping blood. The attacker pushed him into the china cabinet and the plates and glass from the windows of the cabinet fell on the teenager. All of the glass made small cuts on his arms, face and neck. The attacker picked him up by his hair and dragged him to the living room where they grabbed the knife and ended it once and for all. They lifted the knife high in the air and then plunged it into the boy’s chest.

***********************

Alex’s mother had returned home about an hour after the murder. She knew something was wrong when the gate was open. The sight that awaited her inside her home as something she would never be able to get out of her head. She walked into her house and saw her son’s dead body lying on the floor with cuts all over his heavily bruised body and a knife sticking out of his chest.

She screamed so loud she could feel her throat becoming sore. She began sobbing heavily and fell against the wall and slid down on her back.

*********************

Anna, Rachel, Laura, and Gabriella were standing outside of the VanLinor property and watched as the police taped off the scene and had to drag a broken Cynthia VanLinor-Russell out of her own property but she couldn’t do anything about it. She was visibly broken, she didn’t even look like she was trying. She was too overwhelmed with grief.

Laura had to stay strong in front of everybody she really wanted to cry but she couldn’t, Gabriella was still in shock, she had thought he was dead but just having it be confirmed made it so different. Anna didn’t know how to respond either, her thought process was somewhat the same as Gabriella’s but she was more hurt. Alex had been her best friend from her childhood. But Rachel was different then all of them. Alex hadn’t just been her best friend, he had been her other half, the reason she woke up in the morning, practically her brother. She collapsed onto the ground in a mess of tears.

She couldn’t stop crying, the other girls had to hold her up just to make sure she didn’t accidentally hurt herself.

THREE DAYS LATER

The girls all arrived at the church with black dresses on. They were all accompanied by their parents to the funeral or their best friend. Their parents had been keeping their distance the last couple of days. Except for Rachel’s mom, she had to be the cruelest of them all, even more than Laura’s mom. All she had done was bitch about how Alex deserved to die since he was a “fag supporter”. She was more homophobic than every member of the Westboro Baptist Church put together. She never dared try to separate Alex and Rachel because she knew that she was his favorite and if she tried to take his favorite she’d be trying to get out a straitjacket until the day she died.

Alex had resources and he could lie so well the girls were sure he convinced himself sometimes. If Rachel’s mom or any of the girl’s moms had tried to separate them from Alex it’d be one of the last things they did for a while.

The four girls walked into the church where a white coffin with a gold trim was surrounded by Red Roses (Alex’s favorite flower) and had an art easel with a picture of him next to it.

“He would have loved this funeral.” Anna broke the silence.

“Yeah.” Gabriella and Laura agreed in unison.

“He would’ve wanted confetti and liquor.” Rachel mumbled with a small giggle.

The girls are lightly chuckled because it was true. Alex hated depressing things. If you were at a party and you weren’t dancing or drinking he’d pick you up and force you to loosen up. It seemed rude and unnecessary to some of them but he just wanted them to have fun and enjoy themselves.

The girls all sat down in the front where Cynthia had more than likely guaranteed they have seats. She was still staying with Anna’s family because her mansion was a crime scene and she was an emotional wreck. She damn near refused to eat unless Anna got her protein shakes which she reluctantly drank and then she would just lay in bed and cry and sleep. It was really sad but it was her way of coping.

The pastor at the front of the room began reading some Bible verses that were in farewell of Alex.

After the funeral everybody began hurrying out of the doors. Nobody wanted to be at a funeral and nearly everybody in Briarwood had come to say goodbye to the Queen Bee of the town.

The girl’s all went outside and sat there waiting for their parents to pull the cars around so they could go home.

“It doesn’t really feel like he’s gone.” Rachel said.

“But he is Rachel, and it’s going to take some getting used to, but we’ll make it without him, we still have him in our memories.” Laura said as she hugged Rachel in an attempt to comfort her.

Their phones all went off.

Beep Beep

Badum Badum

Boop Boop, Boop Boop

Dingggg

The girls all pulled out their phones and saw they each had a text message from a blocked number.

The Game’s Only Just Begun. Hold Tight Bitches. –A

* * *

**A Black Hooded Figure is unpacking boxes in what appears to be a small apartment. There were at least 50 cardboard boxes scattered across the floor. The hooded figure put up a poster of an all too familiar face that had been plastered across town for the past week. The face of Alex VanLinor.**


	2. Ding Dong the Wicked Bitch is Dead

Chapter 2, Ding Dong the Wicked Bitch is Dead

A week has passed since Alex was murdered. Everybody was coping with his death in their own ways. The girls were not ready to return to school. Hell, Rachel wasn’t even ready to leave the comfort her bed offered her. Laura on the other hand, could not wait to go back to school. While on the inside she was emotionally wrecked she knew she still had to maintain her appearance and what better way to do that than to walk into school with her head high showing everybody that she wasn’t going to let Alex’s death affect her too much. She wasn’t like the other girls, she was going to use this to make herself stronger; but it was hard. Because while Alex was also her competition and her bully, he was also her number one motivator. He helped her maintain her social appearance.

She got up at 6 AM precisely to her alarm of Barbra Streisand’s “Funny Girl”. She got up, made herself a breakfast of an egg white omelet with toast, vegetarian bacon, and a glass of orange juice. She ate it all, cleaned her dishes, and sat down with a study guide for each of her classes and gave herself a small questionnaire on each subject. She couldn’t afford to lose any knowledge and to do early morning studying was the best way to do that. After her self-quiz she got dressed, did her hair and makeup, and was off to school.

Before Alex, her routine was to simply get up, grab a bowl of cereal, and do her makeup and get dressed. She didn’t care as much about being number one at everything else, she just wanted to be able to eat and look good for school; but when he came into her life, he made sure she looked best. He couldn’t allow somebody to be below perfect in his group. It wasn’t tolerable for him.

* * *

The girls all met at their usual spot; Alex’s spot. It was the largest oak tree on the Briarwood High campus. They had all carved their names into it over the summer before freshman year. Alex had brought them onto campus and carved their names in it so they had their own spot when school started up. He was all about entitlement and ownership. He had gotten to take a tour of the school and picked out their lunch table, their hangout spot (the tree), and even their seats in classrooms. He had one of his mom’s techy council friends hack into the school’s computer system and make it so they all had the same periods if they had the same class, he had to be able to keep an eye on them at all times as though they were his dolls.

Laura never wanted to admit it, but she was scared of Alex. Truly terrified of him. One time, they got in an argument and she yelled at him. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, her blood chilled. She was petrified when he quirked his eyebrow and smirked. He was looking straight past her, thinking of all the things he could do to her. He could do anything he wanted. If he wanted her to gain weight, he’d start putting stuff in her food to make her gain weight rapidly, he could start crushing up copious amounts of pills and putting them in her drinks so she developed an addiction to them and would get in trouble for it. He could tell everybody she was knocked up, which would ruin her home and social life. He was a teenage antichrist with an iPhone.

All of the girls were scared of him. He would always joke about and hint at leaving them to find a new group. They knew deep down he was joking but the thought of him doing that was terrifying. Not only would they be lost without their leader but he’d just have all of their secrets and he could just drop all of their secrets and wouldn’t even have the tiniest inkling of regret like he’d had if they were friends.

The girls all walked into the school and all eyes were on them. It was as if they had neon signs hanging above their heads. They would have probably received less attention if that were the case. They had been the queen clique with the Queen Bitch of the school as their leader. They were invincible and now they felt bare. Rachel looked to the left and saw Isabella Jones crying. She had been Alex’s girlfriend. Rachel wanted to go comfort her but she knew she couldn’t leave her friends.

The girls had all had friends outside of their group. Not many, but still. Rachel had Allison Larsen, Laura had Helen Beauregard, Gabrielle had Sara McCloud, and Anna had Ariana Rossman. They weren’t just acquaintances though, they were real friends. Like their second best friends. Losing one of them would be like losing a member of the group. Which they just did . . .

* * *

Over the course of the week, some (very few) have mourned Alex’s death while most others rejoiced in it. The tyrant was gone and his rule of tyranny was also over. It was like a new age for the citizens of Briarwood. But there was still the empty spot of queen that somebody had to take over.

The girls didn’t feel like anybody was “worthy” to take Alex’s position. Almost like it should remain empty. The entire town was slowly crumbling without its leader. Everybody was connected to Alex. Even the mailman that somehow handled every house in town every day. He truly was the glue that had held everything together, and with his death it was all falling apart. And the girls were going to be the first to break.

* * *

Aside from Alex, Laura was the model of perfection. A 4.0 GPA, a perfect immune system with an almost flawless body, and she was soon to get into some form of extracurricular to help her grade even more. She was under a constant pressure from everybody to remain as perfect as possible. It was the worst at home. Her family criticized her about everything. Last week she had brought home a history essay that had gotten a 120% and they complained that she could have gotten more than just 20 extra credit points.

When she got home, she did something she didn’t like. Hell, she didn’t even like to think of it but the stress always drove her to that. It drove her to that feeling of claustrophobia and the key to feeling free was in a small container.

After it was over, she had to clean herself or else she would feel dirty and tainted. She went running for an hour and sweat it all out and then went home and took an hour-long shower. She finally felt somewhat clean and could allow herself to sleep in peace.

Her phone went off.

Boop Boop, Boop Boop

No matter how much you clean yourself, you’ll never get rid of me. –A

* * *

After sitting at her desk for a while, Rachel gets up and begins to pace back and forth.  As Rachel paces, her mind wanders. She begins to think of what happened earlier that day. Rachel was walking home after a long day at school. As she was walking her phone chimed. She immediately pulled out her phone to see the message. Without looking up she accidentally walked into someone.

“Sorry.” Rachel said as she looked up to see who she bumped into.

Rachel fazed. The girl said something, but Rachel didn’t hear. She was too busy admiring her. She thought the girl was pretty. Beautiful long, blonde hair and eyes the color of emeralds, and the figure of a model. Five minutes had passed before Rachel’s phone chimed again. It was then she realized she was alone. She shook her head and returned her attention to her phone before returning home.

From there Rachel begins to think about the girl. She was flawless. She stops pacing for a moment and asks herself: Am I attracted to her?

For the past seven or so years this had been a constant inner battle for Rachel. The way that society told her she was supposed to feel about boys was the way she felt about girls. She had a heavily Christian conservative family so coming out of the closet that she wasn’t even 100% positive she was in was a definite no. Her step-dad was the local pastor and her mom was the leader of a youth group and for their daughter to be Gay would be the worst thing imaginable in their eyes. Socially Rachel wasn’t that worried about coming out, there were plenty of gay people at her school. Most of the gay guys were treated like purse dogs by girls and the lesbians were treated as animals behind a glass by the guys but overall nobody cared much. Rachel began pacing again. She couldn’t figure out what to do. As she was pacing, she saw her phone on her desk. She picked it up and punched in Laura’s number quickly.

Ringgggggggg ringggggggg

“Rachel? What’s up?” Came Laura’s melodic voice from the other line.

“Laura, it’s serious, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Rach, what is it, you’re scaring me.”

“Laura, there’s this feeling I’ve had for a long time. I’ve only recently realized it but the way that you, Anna, and Gabrielle feel about boys is the way I feel about girls. I don’t know if there’s something wrong with me or what but if my mom and step-dad ever found out, they’d kick me out.”

“Rachel, calm down. The girls and I love you no matter who you are. Don’t jump too quick to label yourself, we’re only in high school, we’re still discovering who we are. We love you, and we’ll always be your friends no matter what. But honestly Rach, it doesn’t surprise me that you like girls, I’ve seen your wardrobe, you have way too much flannel to be straight.”

Rachel smiled, told Laura bye, and then hung up. She set her phone down on her computer desk. Then the screen lit up as the preview of a text came up.

Dingggg

Aww Rae! You have a little girl crush! I’d hate for mommy and daddy to know! –A

* * *

Gabby was having one of her episodes. Her family knew when she was having one and just left her alone until it was over. Gabby was a self-perfectionist. She felt that everything about herself had to perfect. Her eyes, her lips, her complexion, nose, body, etc. No matter how little she ate and how much exercise she got, she never felt like her body was pretty. She’d look in the mirror and just criticize everything about herself every morning.

She wasn’t pretty enough, she wasn’t skinny enough, she wasn’t filled out enough, she wasn’t athletic enough, etc. It was hard to look at herself in a positive light when she had people next to her like Alex, Laura, Rachel, and Anna who were beyond perfect, especially for their age. And even if they weren’t drop dead gorgeous, they all had special things about them. Rachel was a severely talented musician and artist, Anna had a whole athletic career set out for her for two lifetimes, Laura could run two countries and still have free time to go shopping, but Gabby had nothing. There was nothing about her that she felt was special.

She was just a sophomore with average grades, an unappealing body, and bad morning breath. She was the exact opposite of everybody else in town. This was a small town where everybody was perfect. Except Gabby, she was less than appealing. Nobody seemed to notice but she hated it. There had to be something that made her special. Oh yeah, there was. Alex. He was one of the most important things in her life; he kept her as perfect as possible and kept her popular and always ahead of most people. Now that he was gone she was going to get just as much attention but it would be because she was the friend of the dead Queen Bee.

She had tried everything to become perfect. Bulimia, Anorexia, days on a treadmill, swimming, getting into sports, dieting, etc. But no matter how skinny or athletic she was she hated what she saw in the mirror. She had even talked to her parents about plastic surgery. They didn’t know how much she hated herself. They were too oblivious to see just how pained everyday was. She lifted up her shirt in the mirror of her room and saw a small amount of extra chub on her stomach. Just that little amount of fat or skin was enough to send her spiraling. She immediately dove to the toilet and shoved her finger down her throat, as if it was natural as falling asleep stomach acid began to spill from her mouth into the toilet. It was hard to throw up when she hadn’t eaten for two days. She wiped her mouth and sat on the floor rocking back and forth disgusted by herself. Her phone went off:

Beep Beep

Oh hun, it’s hard to throw up when you don’t even have anything in your stomach. -A

* * *

Laura and Jeremy were having one of their “study dates” at Laura’s house because her parents were out for a few hours. It usually included about ten minutes studying, sex, and then ten more minutes of studying. It was a great process for the both of them and they both had 4.0 GPA’s so the lack of studying was fine. They were doing their last ten minutes of actual studying when Jeremy grunted angrily from behind the screen of his laptop.

“What’s wrong?” Laura asked, figuring it was something about football or something else equally ridiculous that somehow managed to aggravate his straight boy senses.

“It’s another article on the city’s website; of Alex.” He said through clenched teeth.

“Well he did just kinda die and he was the son of the mayor so I think his presence will linger for about forever.”

“Why? He’s dead, he’s gone that’s all there is to it. Why does he have to still hang around? It’s like he’s not even dead!”

“Will you be a little more respectful? He was my friend and he’s dead.”

“Me? Me have respect for him?” His nostrils were flared and his eyes full of anger. “Why does he deserve any respect? Why does he deserve peace? He was a stone cold bitch who deserved every bit of what he got.”

There was a bit too much passion in his voice. He was too angry.

“Okay just calm down, we get it. Alex wasn’t a nice person. It’s done and over with. But I have stuff to do so you should probably go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He calmed down a bit, gave Laura a quick kiss on the cheek, and walked out the door. Laura let out a breath she wasn’t aware she was holding in. She whipped out her phone and dialed Rachel’s number.

“Hello?”

“Rae, it’s me call Gabby and Anna and have them come to my house immediately! There’s something important!”

She hung up the phone and set it down on the table, waiting for the girls to show up.

About twenty minutes later the door opened and the three girls came in.

“What is it? What’s so important that I had to leave soccer practice for?” Anna asked.

“I think Jeremy might be A.”

That got all the girl’s attention. She explained everything that happened, how he had gotten outrageously frustrated at the prospect of Alex being remembered.

“Why would he get that pissed off just because Alex is being remembered? He was the mayor’s kid and the ruler of this town basically.” Gabby said.

“Think about it. He hated Alex with a burning passion, he always has. He’s always thought he was overly controlling and a complete bitch. It makes perfect sense. He killed Alex and we let Alex do everything he did all that time so he’s getting revenge on us. He’s got inner access to our little group because he’s my boyfriend. God, it’s so obvious how have we not seen this before, it may have only been a week but I’m me and I should have seen this coming by the first A text.”

“One question. A and Alex’s killer. Same person or not?” Rachel asked.

“Same person.” They all agreed in unison.

Badum Badum, Dingggg, Beep Beep, Boop Boop Boop Boop

You’re getting colder bitches. –A

* * *

After the whole situation with Jeremy, Anna needed to go home and relax. The past week had been possible the most stressful week of her life. One of her best friends had been murdered and some psycho named ‘A’ had been stalking her for the past week. It was times like this where she understood why people did drugs. What she wouldn’t do for a bottle of whiskey at the moment.

She looked over at her staircase and was hit with an overwhelming feeling of disgust. That was a place where she had lost any and all respect for her mother. Throwing yourself down the stairs isn’t an acceptable way to solve your problems. She snorted to herself at the thought. If only everybody knew what her mother had done on that staircase and the story behind it. She would be immediately kicked from her position as the head of the school board; nobody would want to have to see her every day and would make sure she was gone.

But her mother had strongly established a while ago that nobody was to find out about this. It would damage her soccer career, it would ruin her mother’s career, and destroy her father in every way possible.

Badum Badum

But the question is sweetie did she throw herself or was she pushed? -A

* * *

The girls were summoned to the VanLinor mansion on Sunday evening at 6. It was the first time any of them would have stepped inside the mansion since Alex’s murder and none of them were looking forward to it. The first person they saw at the front door was none other than Alex’s mother Cynthia VanLinor. Alex always told the girls that his mom was two-faced, she was sweet and baking cookies like a cookie-cutter poster suburban mom one minute and the next minute she was a ruthless cruel cold-hearted leader who only cared about her and her family’s personal gain. Laura always found it ironic that when Alex said that about his mom, he was in a way describing himself. The girls loved her though, she had always been nice to them. She would bring them platters of crackers and lunch meats or fruits and vegetables every time the girls would hang out with Alex. She was a sweet woman and had always been an adult they knew they could trust.

The girls individually hugged her and said hi.

“Hey girls, you’re probably wondering why I had your parents bring you over.”

She got a murmur of agreement from the girls.

“Well I knew that I had no use for any of Alex’s stuff and anything the police thought had to do with his death they’ve already taken. So you girls can go up to his room and take anything of his you’d like.”

She gave a warm smile and tried her best to seem like a well put-together woman who was handling her only child’s murder perfectly well but inside she was screaming and crying. The girls walked up to Alex’s room together.

“Okay I’m not the only one who thinks it’s really fucking creepy that we’re going to take our dead best friend’s stuff am I?” Laura asked to break the silence once they went into Alex’s room.

“No I’ve been getting chills since she told us to come take his stuff. I don’t know if I want to do this.” Rachel spoke up.

“I don’t know I have always wanted his memory foam slippers.” Gabby said trying to break the tension.

The girls began to just look through his stuff. Alex had always hidden stuff right in front of the girls and it always made them curious to know what he was hiding, what he considered to not be public knowledge and wanted nobody touching.

Laura came across one of his pictures of all five of them that he had framed in a little gold frame that they all decorated with their initials in foam letters from the arts and crafts store. He may have been an evil person to most people, but to them, being with him was like being home. Rachel loved the fact that the person that scared so many people could make her feel so safe. He was her best friend and his death had been hurting her the most. When Rachel was looking in his bed she decided to check his old hiding spot. He had hollowed out a part of his headboard to use as a hiding place. She put her hand in and felt the familiar leather bound book she had seen so many times and always wanted to open and read.

After making sure none of the girls were looking, she grabbed the diary and stuck it in her bag. She had to keep it for herself. She wasn’t trying to be selfish she just felt that she deserved it the most. It was her best friend. He had told her the hiding place so it’s not like he didn’t want her to look there. He trusted her more than the other girls. While Rachel had been taking the diary, Gabby took his memory foam slippers, Laura took the picture frame, and Anna took the soccer ball they had played with as kids.

“Wait guys look at this.” Laura called out and everybody gathered around as she pulled a notebook out of Alex’s desk.

“Is it a diary?” Anna asked.

“I doubt Alex kept a diary but even if he did he wouldn’t do it in a notebook.”

The girls started to look through it and they found notes, scribbles, and all types of things that made them interested. He had drawn diagrams and things that looked like police boards when they’re solving a murder with all the lines and pictures and notes. He was trying to solve something but all the girls saw were names of mythical creatures, like Vampires, Werewolves, Witches, etc. So either Alex had an odd obsession with the supernatural or it was some type of code.

* * *

When the girls were all called into the police station they could agree today was not going to be very pleasant. Cynthia VanLinor was steadily nagging the police because she was apparently just as unpleased with being called to the station as the girls were. It had slowly been dawning over the girls that this would be their lives for the next couple of years. They would always be the girls who were friends with Alex and that was all they’d be. He was dead and he still made them seem invisible.

Anna was thrown into the room first. Separated, which was upsetting because they weren’t sure what was happening and they were all each other’s support and it was difficult for them to function without each other.

“Where were you between the hours of 6 and 8AM on September 7th?” The unknown detective asked.

“I was out for my morning jog at 6 and then I got home at around 7 and started getting ready for school until the police sirens began blaring outside of my house as they sped to Alex’s house.”

“Can anyone confirm that?”

“I’m sure if you asked around my neighborhood you’d have a few of them tell you they saw me jogging like they do every morning. Mrs. Conley two doors down from me was tending to her garden and waved to me you can ask her.”

The detective scribbled some stuff down on his notepad.

“Do you know anybody who would want to hurt Alex? Did he ever say anything about being scared of somebody?”

“I mean some people at school and around town really hated him but I’m not sure anybody would have gone as far as killing him. Alex wasn’t scared of anything or anybody, everybody was scared of him.”

“Was Alex involved in gangs or a group like that? Did he have any involvement with drugs?”

“Alex thought gangs were an immature waste of time and that people who were in them were just using numbers as a way to scare people. And of course he drank alcohol sometimes and I’m pretty sure he smoked weed once he’s a 16 year old.”

“What was your relationship with Alex?”

“We were best friends. He was the leader of our group. We loved him. He always kept us motivated to be the best version of ourselves and then to reach above that because he wouldn’t let us be anything less than above perfect.”

“When did you last see Alex alive?”

“We were having our before school year get together in Rachel’s mother-in-law house in her backyard. That’s when he went missing.”

“Did you kill Alex VanLinor?”

“No! I would never do that he was one of my best friends!”

After that the detective shut his notebook and told her to send Gabby in next.

* * *

“Where were you between the hours of 6 and 8AM on September 7th?”

“Um I was sleeping until I heard Mrs. VanLinor’s screams from three houses down.”

“Can anybody confirm that?”

“I mean my mom checks in on me sometimes while I sleep you could ask her.”

“Do you know anybody who would want to hurt Alex? Did Alex ever say anything to you about being scared of somebody?”

“Nobody was stupid enough to bother Alex, and no he wasn’t scared of anybody.”

“Was Alex involved in any gangs or groups like that? Did Alex have any involvement with drug use?”

“Anna probably told you but Alex doesn’t think very highly of street groups. Alex probably drank but aside from that I doubt it.”

“What was your relationship with Alex?”

“He was my group leader, my motivation to be perfect, and my best friend.”

“When did you last see Alex alive?”

“At our pre school year sleepover in Rachel’s mother-in-law house. That was the night he went missing.”

“Did you kill Alex VanLinor?”

“No, why would I kill my only motivation to look as good as possible?”

After that he sent Gabby out and asked for Rachel to come in.

* * *

“Where were you between the hours of 6 and 8AM on September 7th?”

“I was sleeping and then I woke up at about 7:30 and was getting ready until my mom told me what happened at the VanLinor mansion.”

“Can anybody confirm that?”

“My mom since she was with me most of the time.”

“Do you know anybody who would want to hurt Alex? Did Alex ever say anything to you about being scared of somebody?”

“There were plenty of people at school that didn’t like him but I’m not sure anybody would want to murder him. Alex was only scared of one thing and it was the idea of being less than perfect in his eyes.”

“Was Alex involved in any gangs or groups like that? Did Alex have any involvement with drug use?”

“If you count our group as a gang I suppose so but street gangs were stupid to him. He only drank alcohol occasionally and smoked weed once.”

“What was your relationship with Alex?”

“He was my best friend. Even above the other girls. I’m very insecure and he was the only person who could make me feel good about myself sometimes.”

“When did you last see Alex alive?”

“At our pre school year sleepover in my mother-in-law house.”

“Did you kill Alex VanLinor?”

“He was the person I loved most on this planet. I would never hurt him.”

The detective could tell she was clearly upset about the whole ordeal and patted her shoulder before sending her out. Now he only had one more person to interview.

* * *

“Where were you between the hours of 6 and 8AM on September 7th?”

“It’s the beginning of the school year. I was getting ready for school and going through my checklist making sure I was more than prepared for the beginning.”

“Can anybody confirm that?”

“No, I’m awake before anybody else in my house.”

“Do you know anybody who would want to hurt Alex? Did Alex ever say anything to you about being scared of somebody?”

“I think the shorter answer would be who didn’t want to hurt Alex. He was a heartless mean person and I’m sure a lot of people wanted to hurt him. Alex wasn’t scared of anybody. Which probably wasn’t smart because his lack of fear and empathy is what got him where he is today.”

“Was Alex involved in any gangs or groups like that? Did Alex have any involvement with drug use?”

“Gangs were beneath Alex he believed that they were inferior and anybody involved in one was a pathetic coward. Aside from drinking alcohol nope.”

“What was your relationship with Alex?”

“He was my best friend and my worst enemy. It was a constant state of competition between us but he always one. He was my group leader though and I’m scared of my group falling apart now that he’s gone.”

“When did you last see Alex alive?”

“At the preschool year sleepover me and him went for a walk to find my phone because I thought I had dropped it on the way to Rachel’s mother-in-law house. I got in my car to look for it in there and when I came out of the car he was gone.”

“Did you kill Alex VanLinor?”

“No. I’m not that stupid. I wanted to punch him in the face a few times but I didn’t kill him.”

* * *

The girls waited anxiously in the lobby to be dismissed to go home when Laura’s mom was called in to the room with the detective. There were raised voices and she finally stormed out of the room and ordered Laura to go with her. The rest of the girls were dismissed and they were on their way home. The other moms went over to Laura’s mom and asked her what was wrong and the girls were with them. With clenched teeth and a look that could kill a small country she said:

“Laura has been ruled as the Person of Interest in Alex’s murder.”

* * *

In a dark room with pictures of Alex VanLinor, Laura Davidson, Rachel Watson, Gabrielle Moody, and Anna Romano sat a person wearing a black hoodie in a dark grey armchair. The person rocked back and forth while watching the news where a journalist announced:

“Laura Davidson has been ruled as the Person of Interest in the case of Alex VanLinor’s murder.”

The person chuckled to themselves.

Maybe I don’t have to try to ruin these bitches lives. They’re doing a pretty bang up job of it all on their own.

 


	3. You Can Rest When You're DeAd

Chapter 3, You Can Rest When You’re Dead

Rachel had spent the last two days pouring through Alex’s laptop, diary, and notebooks. She spent all of yesterday trying to get into Alex’s laptop but of course, Alex had it password protected and secured so that any unwelcome visitors (which was everybody) couldn’t get in. She had tried everything for passwords; all of the girls names, the city, her name, his name, even his favorite TV show; but to no avail. So at the end of the night she closed the laptop and went to bed. The next day she took it to a computer technician and asked him if he could unlock it if she paid him but he was weirded out by the thought of hacking into the mayor’s dead son’s computer so he denied her request and sent her home.

So now, on the third day of her looking through Alex’s stuff she had decided to look in his diary and notebook. As of now she decided she was going to look through the notebook because the thought of what could be in Alex’s diary frightened her.

Flipping to the first page she already knew that she had discovered something weird. In the notebook were some detailed illustrations that looked like a bald man-bat hybrid that had milky white skin and beady black eyes that made you feel like it was watching you wherever you were. Underneath the illustration was the word Vampire in bold red letters. He had several notes scribbled down: Vampire transformation done by either witch or two vampires. Witch transformation requires fire, blood, DNA, and soul. Vampire transformation requires heart and soul and vamp magic.

The notes of mythical creatures confused Rachel immensely. Did Alex seriously believe in witches and vampires? She looked through more pages:

Werewolves, either born or cursed. Witches, born that way. Several types of witches: Life, Death, Elemental, Nature Spirit, Time, and Eternity. Angels and Demons = byproducts of supernatural judgement. Body jumpers and Shape shifters. Ghosts. Mermaids.

There were barely legible notes for each creature he listed in the notebook. Which didn’t make sense because Alex always had pretty neat handwriting. She didn’t know what to do with the notes so she set them aside and convinced herself that they were for some English assignment he was writing. Yeah, Alex actually doing his own English assignment okay Rachel, because if Alex was taking this stuff seriously she’d have to start thinking of him as a lunatic. She set aside the notebook and picked up the diary, which was laying on her bed. It had a cursive pale pink capital ‘A’ on the front engraved into the leather and a small lock that kept it shut but to her luck, the key was already in there. She unlocked the diary and turned to the first page:

 

 

 

Amy Winehouse the Second

I try so hard with these girls it’s ridiculous. I mean I get that I’m a bitch sometimes but that’s only like a front so they don’t see that I’m nice sometimes. Only Rachel gets to see that side of me because I genuinely trust her. I don’t know about the others though. I kind of feel that I can trust Anna because of our history together I mean we did grow up together since we were 2. Gabby is definitely a threat I’m always putting her down but that’s not my problem if she didn’t want me to treat her like shit she should do something about it, stand up to me, or change her appearance and not give me a reason to say the things I do say. It’s not even my fault really that I treat her like that I mean just judge people. All. The. Time. It’s like an instinct or a second nature to me. As soon as I see someone I pick out every single one of their flaws down to the last blackhead. Laura on the other hand, now I know I can’t trust her. She’s more than just jealous of me she wants to be me. She always tries to be better than me (ha as if) and now I’ve found out she’s doing cocaine. Like really? You can’t wait until your early college years to do lines in the bathroom? That was my main point of this because I just try so hard to keep my group perfect an all that shit but noooooo they just have to do the exact opposite. I’m trying to help them but I don’t think they get that. They’re not my dolls or my puppets or anything they’re like my students. I’m just teaching them right from wrong and they won’t even listen and it’s so frustrating like why am I spending all of my valuable time trying to teach people things when they won’t even listen to me. I’ll find some way to give Laura a subtle warning to stop doing coke soon. Maybe wipe my nose and wink at her at lunch. Whatever I’ll figure it out later, Little miss Amy Winehouse the Second is the least of my problems.

Goodnight – Alex

Rachel laid the diary down on her bed and just looked around in awe. Laura did cocaine? Does she still do it? It was pretty mindboggling to Rachel because she never pegged Laura as the type to do something so stupid. She had to confront her about it.

* * *

Two days have passed since the girls began to suspect Jeremy as A. Laura was smart though she knew that if she acted odd around him he would know that she knew he was A and she wasn’t going to let that happen because she planned on shutting this game down before it got worse than it already was. He was doing his homework (something he practically insisted on doing at her house when he had a perfectly good home to do his work at)

“Hey babe can you get me a coke.” He said with a smirk.

Her entire body froze. If he was A, which she was almost positive he was then that was his way of taunting her. She wasn’t going to show how just frightened she actually was around him so she got up and gave him the can of coke.

After that, she nervously sat at the table biting her nails and scrolling pointlessly through Instagram liking pictures trying to calm her nerves somehow.

“Babe are you okay?” He said and put his hand on her shoulder sounding genuinely concerned.

She fought the urge to slap his hand away. How could he sit there and pretend to care about her feelings?

“Yeah I’m fine.” She spit out sounding severely angry.

Then her phone went off

Boop Boop, Boop Boop

Are your hands shaking from nervousness or withdrawals? Xoxo – A

That was the moment when Laura realized that she had screwed up.

* * *

She got all lovey-dovey with Jeremy and then told him her mom wanted to take her out for dinner so he had to go home and once he was out the door she locked it and called Rachel immediately and then Rachel added Anna to the call and Anna added Gabby.

She explained everything that had happened.

“Okay so for the past three days we’ve thought your boyfriend was our creepy psycho stalker only to find out we were very wrong.” Gabby said.

“Yeah basically, I mean it’s upsetting because I had to admit I was wrong and you know the only person who hates admitting their wrong more than me is Alex.” Laura replied.

“Well I mean at least we can cross him off the list and you guys can have your relationship.” Anna said.

“Rachel you haven’t said anything at all.”

“I’m just thinking. Oh I’ve got to go my mom is calling for me.”

Then she hung up and the girls said their goodbye and ended the call too.

Boop Boop, Boop Boop

From Rachel – Can I come over there’s something I need to talk to you about?

To Rachel – Yeah sure see you soon.

* * *

Rachel told her mom she was going to Laura’s house real quick and then got in the car and left. She arrived at her house and hugged Laura as soon as she got inside.

“What was that for?” Laura asked.

“I just need to talk to you about something but first I have to use the bathroom.”

Laura just motioned for her to go off and Rachel went upstairs. Rachel didn’t go to the bathroom, she just turned the light on and closed the door and then went into Laura’s bedroom. Luckily, she knew all of Laura’s hiding places that she thought were oh so clever. She checked the false bottom of her nightstands top drawer; nothing. She checked the empty lightbulb in the tall lamp in the corner of her bedroom, all that was in there was a small amount of money put away for safekeeping. Then finally she checked in her closet and pulled back the fake plug outlet and inside of it was a small orange pill bottle. She opened the childproof cap and turned it upside down. Out fell four small baggies filled with white powder.

She immediately got upset. Not angry or sad just very upset. She didn’t understand why one of her best friends was doing this to herself. Why was she throwing her entire life away all for a short high? She didn’t want to confront Laura right now because she just couldn’t bring herself to speak. So she put all but one bag of coke back and then put everything back to normal, turned the light off in the bathroom after flushing the toilet, and then walked downstairs to Laura with the baggie of coke in her flannel pocket.

“So what’d you need to talk to me about?” Laura asked as Rachel returned from upstairs.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay after the whole Jeremy situation I mean I’m assuming that was pretty stressful.”

“Yeah it was, but everything’s better now that I know he isn’t A.”

Rachel gave Laura a quick hug and then walked out the door, taking the coke with her.

* * *

Anna paced back and forth waiting for her soccer coach to blow the whistle signaling the start of their soccer practice. This was her outlet. This was what made her Anna. It was what connected her to Alex . . .

Since they were 4 years old they had always played soccer together. It was their thing. She wasn’t even sure he liked soccer that much but he still made an effort to play every single day for her . . . and now he was gone.

Anna kept it composed because while she wasn’t the strong leader of the group she knew that they still viewed her as a strong person and if she broke then it would all turn to hell. She had to be strong for them.

She was snapped out of her thoughts by the loud whistle of the coach. Now she could finally clear her head. She was sad, mad, and confused, she didn’t know what to feel. Alex was more like a brother to her than a friend. Their parents were good friends and they were basically born together. A sibling bond like that and now it was gone because somebody murdered him.

She was kicking the ball into the goal so hard it bounced back at her giving her the opportunity to keep kicking it back. Her legs, thighs, and feet were killing her after about thirty minutes of kicking the ball into the goal.

Every part of her lower body ached and burned she wanted to stop but she was too angry. She was too overwhelmed.

Kick

Alex is gone.

Kick

There was nothing she could do about it,

Kick

Somebody was now stalking them and they had no idea who it was.

Kick

They were taunting them with Alex’s murder.

Kick

And she was powerless to stop anything.

Finally she let out her hardest kick yet which caused the ball zoomed across the field and hit the net with such a force it retaliated back at her and hit her in the stomach. She keeled over and just sat on the field. Everybody had already left because she stayed behind, but they left her alone because they knew what she was going through.

She was on her hands and knees on the soccer field looking at the grass and just thinking about Alex, and that’s when she felt it. The itchy feeling behind her eyes and the prickle as a tear fell. Then another. Two more, and before she knew it she was full on bawling her eyes out on the soccer field. Holding herself and rocking back and forth just wishing she could have her best friend. No, wishing she could have her brother back.

Badum Badum

Kick kick kick, tick tick tick. You’re a time bomb Anna and people aren’t going to want to be around you when you blow up. Xoxo – A

* * *

Gabby was lying on her bed looking through a scrapbook Rachel had put together last year. It was a memoir of their group. There were pictures of them and quotes and other things that just perfectly brought together their friendship as a whole. She saw their first group picture they had ever taken. It was in front of their middle school; they had been in 5th grade and couldn’t wait to go to middle school. It all seemed like a completely new world to them. Then she flipped a few pages and saw a picture of them from the summer before 9th grade with all five of them at Disneyworld, they were standing in front of the Cinderella Castle, Alex was in the middle with Rachel on his left, Anna on his left, Gabby on the far left, and Laura on the far right. That had been an amazing day. Alex had bought them all annual passes and they used them about 10 times but that was the last time. Rachel loved to only show the good parts of the group. She was a true optimist. But when it came down to it, the bad parts were definitely worse . . .

Flashback

It was a shopping day for all of them. Sometime over the summer before 10th grade. About a month before Alex died. They were hitting the food court first because they were all starving. Since they came right when the mall opened the only place that was open was Panda Express. They all ordered and Gabby went last. She ordered sweet and sour chicken with two egg rolls. Alex looked over at her with a smirk.

“Gabby sweetie really? You should just stick with a salad.”

The girls all looked away because they didn’t want to say anything. Gabby didn’t want to make Alex upset so she handed the lady back the food.

“Can I just get a Chinese chicken salad?” She said while choking back tears.

The lady gave her a sympathetic look and handed it to her, making sure to not make eye contact with Alex. After eating they went to go clothes shopping. Hollister was a must for Alex so they went in there first. Gabby was looking around while everybody else looked around too and she picked out a crop top and festival shorts. Then suddenly she heard Alex’s voice from behind her.

“Stretch marks and back fat don’t go good with crop tops.” He said with a smirk and handed her a fishnet cardigan. “Try that on with a light colored shirt.”

The day went like that and he just continuously berated her and convinced her to put back anything he considered unflattering. She picked out some cute things but all the stuff she really wanted he made her feel bad about it. But that was Alex. And it was their friendship . . .

Flashback End

Looking back at this she wonders why she let him do all that. Because I was scared of him. He was a horrible person but he was her best friend. He wasn’t always awful and when he was being nice he could be the most amazing person you’d ever met.

* * *

The girls had all planned to have a sleepover at Laura’s house that night. So one by one they came over to Laura’s house. When Rachel got there the whole group’s demeanor changed. They knew something was serious. Rachel grabbed Laura by the arm and took her upstairs into her room.

“What the hell is this?!” Rachel yelled and whipped out the bag of coke.

The blood drained out of Laura’s face.

“Well Rachel that’s either cocaine or flour but don’t snort it even if it’s flour.”

“Laura this isn’t a joke you know I found this in your hollowed out light socket and there’s about four more in there.”

Rachel wasn’t just mad. She was pissed. Laura could easily tell this.

“Rach, it’s nothing serious just a little something to take the edge off at the end of the day.”

“A little something to take the edge off at the end of the day could be a punching bag, or a candle-lit bath, hell your parents are loaded go get a massage to release the stress and tension. But don’t sit there and ruin your life that is going amazingly so far all for a little high at the end of the day because when that wears off your problems are still going to be there and you’re still going to be just as fucking stressed out!”

Rachel was screaming and Rachel never screamed. Laura could count on one hand the amount of times she’s seen Rachel mad.

“Rach, I’m sorry. I just . . . with everything going on with Alex and the pressure my parents put me under . . . and I’m trying to stay strong for all of you guys. It’s just too much.” Laura’s voice cracked and got softer as she said this. Then Laura started crying.

She became a sobbing mess in Rachel’s arms and she was apologizing profusely.

“I’m sorry Rach. I’m so sorry.”

“I’ll help you get through this Anna and Gabby don’t have to know we can get through this together.”

Laura just nodded and just held Rachel tighter embracing her best friend as she realized she had a problem.

* * *

After the situation with Rachel and Laura was over they flushed the coke and Laura washed her face and redid her makeup. They both came downstairs and Anna and Gabby knew to just leave it alone.

Rachel pulled Alex’s laptop out of her book bag and handed it to Laura.

“It’s password protected I’ve tried everything I can think of, I can’t get into it he must have one of those number and letter combination passwords.”

“Rachel, did he teach you nothing in our 5 years of friendship with him? If I know Alex and I do the password will be written down somewhere on or in the laptop.”

Laura opened the disk holder and checked in there, nothing. She peeled back the purchase stickers on them, nothing. Then she flipped the computer upside down, popped out the battery and flipped it over.

“Bingo.”

On a piece of paper taped to the backside of the battery was the password:

or3fk4oz7orce2td

Laura typed the code into the laptop and they were in.

“Well now what?” Anna asked.

“Now we snoop.”

They looked in his Pictures and saw an obscene amount of selfies and pictures of the five of them. Nothing surprising so they just clicked out of it and looked through other things. In Downloads all they found were download files of pictures, school project documents, and things like that. Music was just every single Lana Del Rey song he could possible get. In Documents there were some files. Laura clicked on one of the documents titled “Supernatural”.

In that document there was over 10,000 words of stuff that looked a lot like the information in his notebook Rachel had showed her.

“Either Alex really needed to quit binge watching Netflix or he genuinely believed in this stuff. Read a few of the things out loud.” Anna said.

“Mermaids. Mermaids have the ability of mind control; it’s stronger over men than women. Mermaids only sprout tails when they come in contact with water but it doesn’t happen immediately, it happens after about ten seconds or so. The tail color represents their personality (red for a mean person, blue for a calm kind person, etc.) Mermaids can hold their breath underwater for hours at a time. The mermaids have powers over water. They can manipulate it in several ways such as freezing it, boiling it, moving it, etc. They also have control over the weather (rain and lightning) more powerful mermaids can extend their powers outside of water. Mermaids can see into the future. Underwater they can swim at a speed of up to 40 Miles per Hours similar to dolphins.”

“What the hell.” Anna said under her breath.

“Yeah. Alex was on some serious drugs.” Gabby said.

“Just read another one.” Rachel ordered.

“Witches. There are several type of witches. Life, Death, Elemental, Nature, Spirit, Time, and Eternity witches. Life witches have mainly healing powers and can bend the will of humans and bring living things back from the brink of death. Death Witches can use dead corpses like animated bodies. Like zombies somewhat. They also specialize in voodoo along with witchcraft. Elemental Witches have total control over the four elements. Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. They can create tornados, tsunamis, earthquakes, solar flares, etc. They can summon any of the four elements and have complete control over them. In order for them to use one of the elements it has to be nearby. Air is always available for use since it's kind of everywhere. But they can make enough fire to light a forest from a single match and a glass of water can become an ocean. Nature witches have control over mainly animals and other life, specifically wildlife. They're similar to life witches and are probably the least powerful type of witch but it all depends on how the witch chooses to use their powers. They can summon any animal even extinct ones so it really all depends on how they use their powers to determine how powerful they are. Time witches are pretty self-evident. They have control over time. Plain and simple. Spirit witches have almost full control over somebody's mind body and soul. They can manipulate the mind to think what they want, alter the soul to make somebody good or evil, make somebody think they love somebody, etc. They're pretty powerful. Eternity witches are very powerful witches. They're all of these witches put into one and not only are they extremely powerful but they're severely rare and dangerous. Witches can only be born witches.”

“Vampires. For a transformation to occur it has to be done by a witch or another vampire. If a witch does it it's a complicated spell and if a vampire does it they have to do it within 5 minutes of their victim's death. But in order for somebody to become a vampire they have to be human. The witch process requires a witch to do a very complicated spell which requires a sacrifice of 1/4 of the person's blood, another piece of their DNA, and a human soul. They sacrifice all those things in a fire and then put the body in the fire which rips away that person's heart and soul. For a vampire, within 5 minutes of somebody's death that person heart and soul are fragile and shutting down so the vampire can remove those things with a type of vampire magic. Since their hearts and souls are removed if their hearts are returned they have their humanity and can act like normal human beings.”

“Ghosts. They don’t have to be dead to become a ghost, living ghosts are created by a witch’s curse but the curse is a complicated spell that most witches refrain from doing, dead ghosts are created by humans when they die, their spirits are left in the real world and they can exist without being seen and still have all the same abilities as a living ghost. But the ghosts are creatures that can phase through solids, can block somebody's senses from them (ex. make people not be able to smell, hear, see, taste, or feel them). They can act like humans just without human needs, if needed they can go for months without eating or drinking, they can breathe without air and can be able to subject themselves to fire without anything bad happening.”

“Wow. Guys what if Alex is serious? I mean c’mon we’ve had some weird shit happen to us over the years how do we know this stuff isn’t serious? I think we should look into it more.” Rachel said.

“I’ll look into it more later. Let’s look through the videos now.”

Laura clicked on the videos tab and then the computer started running slowly. It had the loading button that said it was processing the videos. Once it was done loading, Laura clicked on the first video and up popped a password box.

“Shit.” She mumbled.

She typed in the computer password. The screen blinked red to show her she was wrong.

“Is there any way you could hack into it or something?” Gabby asked.

“I have no clue how to do it.” She responded. “Wait I know someone who does!”

Laura whipped out her phone and started scrolling through her contacts.

“Who?”

“Christopher Jackman.”

“The boy who’s had a crush on you since 4th grade?”

“That’s the one.” Laura replied and then he picked up.

“Laura? Why are you calling me?” He replied. All the girls heard because she put the phone on speaker.

“So you’re all techy and understand computers right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Can you come help me with a problem please?”

“Fine, I’ll be over soon.”

She hung up.

“How far away does he live?” Anna asked.

“Just down the road.”

“What if he asks whose laptop this is?”

“We’ll tell him it’s my sisters or something.”

Christopher got there and knocked on the door and the girls let him in. The girls weren’t ever sure why she dated Jeremy instead of Christopher. He was really attractive, he was on the football team, and he was really smart and sweet.

“Hey thanks for coming over.” Laura said and gave him a quick hug.

“Okay so where’s the problem?”

She pointed at the laptop. “The videos are password protected, can you hack into it and unlock the videos?”

“That takes a while so I’ll only be able to do one tonight.”

“That’s fine, thank you.”

He got to work on the laptop. After about an hour of annoying clicking and typing that almost made the girls lose their minds he stood up.

“I’m done there you go.”

“Thank you so much I definitely owe you one.”

“Can I cash that favor in?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Go on a date with me next saturday night.”

“You know I have a boyfriend right?”

“You know I don’t care right?” He said with a smirk.

Laura blushed deeply. “Fine, next saturday night, I’ll call you.”

She closed the door and turned around, and it was evident to the girls she was blushing.

“Um Laura what if Jeremy finds out about this?” Rachel said.

“I’m just going on a date with him as a friend.”

The girls just nodded their head.

“Well now let’s watch the video.”

They clicked on the video and it sat there loading for a minute until it flickered onto the screen. It was in Alex’s living room and for the first thirty seconds the video was just of him on the internet, he must have had the laptop just constantly recording, hoping to record drama. Typical Alex. Then there was a knock on his door and he turned the laptop to the door and got up to open it.

When he opened the door Laura’s mom was standing in the doorway.

“Where is it Alex I know you have it?!” Myra shouted as she shoved past him and walked into the house.

“Oh whatever are you speaking of Mrs. Davidson?” Alex asked, his tone just dripping with sarcasm.

“You know exactly what I mean you little parasite!”

He pulled out a disk labeled “DAVIDSON BLACKMAIL”.

“Do you mean this?”

She went to take it but he put it back in his coat pocket.

“Sorry but no can do, this is some seriously good stuff. I had no idea you were a pyro.”

“What do you want for it?”

“Nothing. I’m going to wait until the time is right for me and then I’m going to use this. So if you’re smart, and I know you are, you won’t give me a reason to do this, will you Mrs. Davidson?”

“You know Alex, one day somebody’s going to get you back for all the shit you’ve done. One day somebody’s going to make you pay and your little clique!”

“You’d really wish that on your own daughter?”

“She’s not my daughter when she’s with you.”

“Now there’s your problem Myra, you think everything has to revolve around your so called perfect little family but it doesn’t. Your family isn’t perfect and you need to realize that soon because one day your little fantasy is going to shatter.”

“One day you’re going to get what’s coming to you Alex. And it might be me who gives it to you.”

He stepped closer to her to the point where their noses were almost touching and whispered:

“I’d like to see you try.”

Then she shoved him back, turned around, and stormed out of the house slamming the door behind her. Alex just turned around and laughed, how he thought it was funny none of the girls understood. Then the video went black.

“Laura, are you okay?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t know what to say or think.” Laura said.

“You know what this means don’t you?” Gabby asked.

“Yes.”

Laura paused taking a moment to breathe.

“My mom is A.”

* * *

A black hooded figure is sitting in a room at a laminating machine. They press a leather-gloved finger to the power button and put a newspaper through the machine. After 10 copies of the same page are laminated, the person tacks them all to the wall and stands back to admire the new view.

LAURA DAVIDSON RULED AS PERSON OF INTEREST IN THE CASE OF ALEX VANLINOR’S MURDER.

 


	4. The Perfect GetawAy

Chapter 4, The Perfect GetawAy

Gabby always wanted to be a doctor. She had decided this when she was 4 years old. She always wanted to be a hero and the only way she knew how to do that was to either fly around with a cape and save people from burning buildings and things like that or save lives by being a doctor. She had researched it constantly, picking out colleges, determining what branch of the subject she wanted to study in college, what would look best on applications to college, etc. It was a big goal for her and she definitely wanted to achieve it.

Now it was time for her to start her volunteer hours for high school. Briarwood High required each student to do 200 hours of volunteer work, Laura was doing hers with Cynthia VanLinor, which she had arranged to do last year, Anna was going to be helping out at the local YMCA coaching kids in soccer, Rachel was going to be teaching an art class to the orphans in Seattle, and now Gabby decided she was going to volunteer at the local hospital.

On her first day she had to wake up at 5 in the morning, which she was not happy about. She got up groggily, took a shower and went for a quick jog to wake her up. When she got to the hospital she was all cheery and bright and she saw the other group of high school volunteers. She recognized some of them from school; Allison Larsen, Jessica Santos, and Isabella Jones.

She was closest with Isabella since she was Alex’s former girlfriend so she decided to stand next to her to feel more comfortable. The lady who was in charge of them gave them instructions and the basics and all that before sending them to the units they volunteered to work in. Gabby had chosen to volunteer in the children’s cancer unit. She wanted to give back as much as possible and she felt that helping sick children was the way to go.

The nurse directed her down a few halls into the room, she walked in and was immediately saddened and filled with joy at the same time. She saw children ranging from 2 years old to 17. Most of them had bandanas around their head and they looked sad. She wanted nothing more in the world than to change that.

“Hey guys this is Gabrielle, she’ll be volunteering here for a while.” The nurse said to the kids.

They all said hi, waved, and smiled at her. Then the nurse left the room leaving Gabby with the kids.

“Okay so what do you guys want to do first? I bought a ridiculous amount of art supplies so you can paint, and draw. And I think this is a sculpting knife, but I guess you can improvise there,” Gabby said while holding the knife. “Um, I was told there’ll be instruments here so we can put on a little show, and maybe we can do a play or something like that.”

The kids didn’t seem enthusiastic about any of the activities at all. Shit. She quickly set up the arts and crafts area with clay, paint sets, crayons, pens, and markers and stuff like that.

The kids gathered around and began painting and making pictures. The younger ones came up to her exclaiming about how proud they were of their paintings to which she complimented the artworks, even more and stuck them on the walls. When the kids were all done with the arts and crafts she decided to gather them around in a circle and grab a guitar from the corner.

You're not alone

Together we stand

I'll be by your side

You know I'll take your hand

When it gets cold

And it feels like the end

There's no place to go

You know I won't give in

No, I won't give in

Keep holding on

Cause you know we'll make it through,

We'll make it through

Just stay strong

Cause you know I'm here for you,

I'm here for you

There's nothing you can say

Nothing you can do

There's no other way when it comes to the true

So keep holding on

Cause you know we'll make it through,

We'll make it through

The kids were all singing along and smiling. To Gabby they seemed genuinely happy. Gabby had done what she came here to do and nothing could ruin that for her.

Beep Beep

You won’t be happy for long bitch. -A

* * *

Leave it to the girls to send me on the frozen yogurt run.

Anna, Laura, and Gabby had all convinced Rachel to get them frozen yogurt from the nearby frozen yogurt shop. She knew all of their favorite flavors. She went over it in her mind:

Raspberry for me, Cupcake for Laura, Banana for Anna, Chocolate for Gabby, and Cotton Candy for Alex.

She stopped in her tracks. Frozen yogurt was the group’s thing. That and Starbucks. It was their go-to hangout places when they were either in the mall or walking around town. It was always the five of them doing stuff together. They were that group that stuck together like conjoined twins. She even knew all of their starbucks orders. A Caramel Ribbon Frappucino for her, a French Vanilla Cappuccino for Anna, a Double Chocolate Chip Frappucino for Gabby, a Vanilla Bean Frappuccino for Laura, and a Cotton Candy Frappuccino for Alex. She knew their orders at Panera, how Alex exclusively wore v-necks and Anna was practically addicted to athletic shorts. She was like the groups mother, always keeping track of their specifics and having things on hand that she knew one of them would probably need.

They had all been through so much together and now it felt wrong almost to be continuing the group without the person who brought them together.

She went into the place and got the frozen yogurt for all four of them and then left, struggling to balance all four cups. When she finally got into her car, she realized she had left the keys inside so she got up and went back inside of the store. The lady at the register handed her the keys, Rachel thanked her, and walked back out.

On the way to her car she heard whistling. She turned around and saw a boy about 17 years old that she didn’t recognize.

“Can I help you?” She asked.

“Yeah, why don’t you come back to my place?” He asked while looking her up and down.

“Go away you pig.” She spat and started walking to her car again.

She heard footsteps coming towards her and she turned around and saw the guy coming closer.

“Come on babe, don’t be like that.”

“Number one, I’m not your babe. Number two, I’m not hooking up with you so goodbye.” She said then turned around on her heel and started walking again.

She was stopped when she felt a pair of hands grab her from behind. She turned around and shoved the guy off.

“You need to leave me alone before I call the cops.” She said through gritted teeth.

He grabbed her by the wrist forcefully.

“I said leave me alone!” She shouted and suddenly she felt a wave of energy go through her body and the man flew backwards and crashed onto a car setting off the alarm. She looked at her hands wondering how she could have done that. She was too shocked to call the cops or anything so she just got in her car and drove off to the girls.

* * *

Laura was home alone, she was rewatching the video of Alex and her mom over and over and over again trying to understand what was happening. It was mind boggling. She couldn’t believe it, her mom just couldn’t be A. She couldn’t harass and stalk her own daughter. Could she?

Boop Boop, Boop Boop

From mom – Going to be home late Cynthia has me swamped with work, love you, see you later.

She pressed the lock button on her phone and took this opportunity to do some snooping. She first went upstairs to her mom’s room and opened the door. It was your typical suburban parent room. A four poster bed with a white bed set, a bookshelf, a nightstand on either side of the bed with a lamp. She rummaged through the desk, the nightstands, the bookshelf, even underneath the mattress. Nothing. She put everything back in its place neatly and closed the door. She went back downstairs and into the office ready to snoop through her files. After putting in the password to the desktop she went to work. She thoroughly searched every bit of the desktop but all she found there were work files.

After shutting the desktop back down she pulled the laptop out of the desk drawer and opened it. She tried a few different possibilities for the password which ended up being Laura’s birthday. Once she was in she realized that if her mom was A she was about to find out. It both terrified and intrigued her at the same time. She looked in the Pictures folder where she found an enormous amount of pictures of the Davidson family and the girls and Alex. In Music, she found nothing. Downloads was just a bunch of irrelevant stuff. Then finally she got to Documents. There were some scattered documents, but only one folder. Just as she was about to click on it she heard her mom's car roll up into the driveway.

She said she was going to be working late what the hell? Late means a few hours not an hour mom.

She quickly closed the laptop, put it back in the desk, sprinted out to the living room, and sat on the couch playing on her phone. The door opened just as she whipped out her phone.

“Hey sweetie, Cynthia let me go she said I could do the rest of the work tomorrow. Will you order something? I don’t feel like going out to eat or cooking tonight. I’m exhausted. I’m going to go take a shower.”

Laura just nodded and smiled and then went back to her phone, she was pretending to be busy when all she was doing was scrolling through facebook. She waited until she heard the bathroom door shut and the shower to turn on to go back into the office. She sprinted in and grabbed the computer out of the desk quickly, punching in the passcode as fast as possible.

It had opened up right where she left it; on the page with the folder. Just as she was about to click it the screen froze, the mouse wasn’t moving, the little ticking clock in the top left corner wasn’t moving.

“Shit!” She exclaimed.

Then a little loading bar popped up.

FACTORY RESET 10% COMPLETE

“No, no no!” She exclaimed trying to find an ‘x’ or a cancel button but she couldn’t stop it, the numbers kept going until it was 100% complete and the computer restarted.

She buried her face in her hands, severely aggravated. When the computer finished restarting she shut it down and put it back where she found it and walked out to the living room.

She whipped out her phone and texted all the girls what had happened and then did the only thing she could do; order Chinese food.

Boop Boop, Boop Boop

It won’t be that easy bitch. -A

* * *

“I was so fucking close to knowing what was in that folder!” Laura exclaimed as she banged on the dashboard while Anna drove the car to Laura’s beach house.

“Laura just calm down okay, this is exactly why you’re not allowed to be driving right now.” Gabby said, putting her hand on Laura’s shoulder, trying to comfort her.

“Why are we going to my beach house anyways?” Laura asked trying to get her mind off of the laptop.

“Ah yes, about that.” Anna started trying to find a way to tell her without her freaking out. “I’m throwing a party there, no biggy.”

“No biggy! Oh my God, if my mom finds out she’ll kill you and then kill me with your dead body! Turn around we can’t do this!”

“Well too late because I invited about twenty people already and you know how word gets around in Briarwood.”

“Oh my God.” Laura buried her face in her hands.

“You say ‘oh my God’ a lot for an atheist.”

“Yeah well what else am I going to say, it’s an expression.”

The girls just giggled.

“Anna please turn the car around I really don’t want to get in trouble with my mom, we’re already pretty sure she’s A, what if she actually kills me.”

The girls just giggled and ignored her.

“I feel like I’m arguing with the cast of fucking teletubbies.”

* * *

The girls arrived at the beach house after the 30 minute drive. When Laura walked in she knew they were being serious about the party and there was no going back. On her dining room table there were about six bag of balloons, an empty punch bowl, about 10 two-liter bottles of soda, and an assortment of alcohol and liquor including vodka, whiskey, scotch, and bourbon.

“Are you guys serious?” Laura asked.

“Yep, now let’s set this party up!” Anna exclaimed, clearly overjoyed to be throwing a party.

Anna and Gabby got to blowing up all of the balloons, Laura poured about 10 different fruit drinks into the punch bowl and then poured the bottle of vodka in. She set out several stacks of the red solo cups. Rachel got to work decorating and setting out the food. She put up streamers, replaced the light bulbs with colorful ones, and starting the large bonfire outside. She was so relieved when she found out that Anna had already gotten plenty of wood for her to put in the pit along with the gasoline and matches.

She assembled the large planks of wood in a teepee type formation, then poured about a cup's worth of gasoline at the base of them. She lit the match and tossed it on the fire watching it roar to life as it slowly burned upwards, engulfing the entire pile of wood.

Soon after they all finished decorating and setting up, the guests arrived and it was time to party.

* * *

Everybody was loving it. At least 500 people showed up. The bottles were being drained rapidly, several balloons popped, there were a couple thongs tossed across the couch, it was a successful party. Laura, as stressed out and uptight as she was, was doing body shots off of Jessica Santos. Anna, had somehow managed to lose her pants and shirt, was dancing on the table in her bra and underwear. Rachel was busy doing a keg stand while everybody cheered her on. Gabby was dancing with Sam Stone. This was the most fun they all probably had since Alex died. They weren’t letting themselves feel this good lately so a night like this was amazing.

* * *

Anna was dancing on the table when she suddenly felt a hand on her wrist. She looked down and saw Brandon Mott – a boy in their year with dark brown hair and emerald eyes – holding on to her.

“Let’s get you out of here, these people are looking at you like you’re food.”

He picked her up bridal style and she was still laughing for some reason. He carried her into one of the rooms and wrapped a blanket around her.

“I’m sorry if I ruined your fun, those boys were just looking at you like a piece of meat and I was disgusted.”

“It’s fine, thank you.” Anna was the least drunk out of the four girls and could actually behave properly unlike Laura who was steadily doing body shots off of people.

“I’m Brandon.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m Anna, but you already knew that.”

“Are you okay?” He asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I can handle some stupid teenage boys.”

“I didn’t mean them, I meant about Alex.”

“Oh, that. Um, yeah, I guess. It’s hard, he was like a brother to me. I knew him my whole life, we were practically born together, he was my motivation, and my best friend. It’s getting easier though, I haven’t cried much. If he saw me crying over his death he’d probably tell me to stop being such a wimp and go play soccer.”

“He seems like a pretty awful person.”

“No, he wasn’t to us. He was just the textbook definition of tough love. He meant well, and wanted us to be the best versions of ourselves . . . he just didn’t know how to put it the right way. He treated other people the way he did because he had some weird God Complex. He’s gone now though, so it’s done and over with. I’m really not sure why I’m sharing all of this with you, it’s just easy for me to talk to you I guess.”

“It’s no problem, I’m glad you think you can confide in me.”

They looked into each other’s eyes and then Anna pulled him in and kissed him. After a pause he pulled off.

“No Anna, I’m sorry but I can’t do this. You barely know me and you’re drunk, it’s not right.”

She sighed and looked down.

“Um you’re right, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.” Anna stood up, walked out of the room. and to the beach where she jumped in the ocean and swam around trying to clear her head.

* * *

After her keg stand Rachel decided to go dance with Gabby who was helping herself to the spiked punch. Rachel was slurring her words as she spoke:

“So like – I want to dance but like-” She paused looking at her empty cup. “I don’t have any booze or anybody to dance with. So you should like dance with me.”

They started dancing after Rachel got more whiskey. They were a hot mess, they knew this without even having to look in the mirror. Gabby had alcohol in her hair, keeping it matted to her face and neck, Rachel’s clothes were completely soaked from when a group of people carried her into the ocean and threw her in, and both of them were hiccupping severely. They were a parent’s worst nightmare.

A girl – Rachel recognized her as Jessica Santos from their school – walked by them and accidentally bumped into Gabby, knocking her drink over all down the front of Gabby’s shirt. Gabby – in a drunken rage – pushed Jessica over and sent her to the floor with alcohol splashing down on her.

“Watch where you’re going bitch!”

“No, Gabby chill. Just chill.”

Rachel giggled and playfully shoved Gabby so she fell onto the couch nearby them. Rachel then helped Jessica up and winked at her, not thinking in her drunken stupor.

“Gabby I’m sure she was joking, just chill.”

Gabby huffed and went to get more punch. Rachel walked closer to Jessica so they were barely a foot apart.

“Want to dance?” Rachel asked.

“I’d love to.” Jessica replied.

They started to dance and after a while they kissed. When they pulled apart all they could do was laugh.

“Wow Rachel Watson is a lesbian!” Some girl in the crowd exclaimed.

Soon, all eyes were on them and the girl was making a few homophobic slurs. Then Laura got up from the table and walked over to the girl.

“Hey bitch!” She said behind the girl.

The girl turned around and Laura punched her in the face knocking her to the ground. She went over to Rachel and pulled her into a room. Anna had come back in from swimming soon before the situation happened and followed them too, along with Gabby.

“Rachel is it true what she said?” Gabby asked her.

“Yeah it’s true, I didn’t tell you guys because I didn’t want you to be weirded out or hate me or anything.”

“Oh god Rachel no. We could never hate you or be weirded out all because of this. We love you no matter what and don’t ever forget that.”Anna said this all and then hugged Rachel, which soon turned into a group hug between all four of them.

* * *

After the group hug Laura made everybody leave the beach house and the girls were left to clean up, which took them about an hour. The girls were severely drunk and after all the cleaning they were exhausted and decided to go to bed early.

* * *

The girls woke up at about 7 in the morning all with massive migraines.

“Oh my god it feels like somebody is gouging out my eyes.” Laura said while groaning.

“Laura stop yelling.” Rachel said, clutching her head.

“I’m not yelling.”

The girls drove down to the nearest gas station and bought earplugs and sunglasses and went back to the beach house where they went about the rest of the day trying to be as quiet as possible.

The next day they woke up feeling perfectly fine. Anna had woken up much earlier than the rest of them and went for a jog on the beach and then made everybody breakfast. After eating, Anna cleaned up the kitchen.

“Let’s look at one of the other videos.” Gabby suggested after they all went into the living room.

They all got into comfortable clothes and sat on the couch where Laura pulled up Alex’s laptop and opened the second video file. It was of the beach house:

On the dining room table which was only about 15 feet from the girls, the laptop sat open, recording Myra. Myra was pacing around the living room on her phone, she sounded worried and was calling somebody for help. Then there was suddenly a loud banging on the door which made Myra and the girls jump. Myra scrambled to the door and opened it and in the doorway was a very pissed off Alex VanLinor.

“Where is it Myra?!” Alex asked while storming into the house looking left and right.

“Oh do you mean this?” She said in the same sarcastic tone he had used with her not too long ago while signaling to the laptop sitting on the dining room table.

He walked over to the laptop but was stopped by Myra.

“I’ll give you the laptop when you give me the video.”

“Myra, you of all people should know better than to test me. I know how close you are with my mom, she’s probably told you what I can do. I’ll tell you again give me the laptop.” He was spitting venom into each word.

He was enraged, pissed off, it seemed like he wanted to kill her. She must have not known the laptop was recording whenever it was open.

“You don’t scare me, you’re just a 15 year old little boy.” Though Myra said this firmly the girls and Alex could tell she was scared.

He raised his hand and made a movement like he was high-fiving somebody and Myra lifted up off the ground and smashed into the door. Then he made a closed fist movement and lifted his hand up slowly which caused Myra to float up clutching her throat for air. Then Alex swiped his hand in the direction of the kitchen which caused her to go soaring into the refrigerator and crumple to the ground, still conscious. He walked over to her and put his shoe on her wrist.

“If you ever steal something from me again, I will kill you.”

He walked over to the dining room table, grabbed the laptop, and walked out the door. Then the screen went black.

“Holy shit.” Anna muttered under her breath.

“She told me she got in a car accident. How did Alex do all of that stuff?” Laura said, clearly shocked.

“It seemed like he’s one of the witches he talked about in his notebook and his computer files.” Gabby spoke up.

“Are you guys serious? Alex loved dramatics he probably just shoved her a few times and edited it. There’s no such thing as vampires and witches and werewolves.” Rachel said in disbelief.

“Rachel it’s right there, Alex didn’t even know how to edit videos as far as we know.

“Well I’m not believing this! It’s crazy, it’s ridiculous, vampires and witches and werewolves aren’t real!” Rachel exclaimed.

She stormed out of the house and slammed the door behind her.

All the girls could do was look around at each other, completely oblivious to the camera steadily watching them.

* * *

“Rach, what the hell was that!?” Laura called out to Rachel as she walked out of the beach house to find her.

“I don’t want to talk about it okay.”

“Well you need to because that reaction was about a lot more than just some video you thought was fake.”

“Ugh...Today when I was getting us all frozen yogurt, there was some guy harassing me, trying to hook up with me.” Rachel said as she came to a stop, forcing Laura to stop in her tracks right in front of her.

“Oh Rach, please tell me you didn’t kill him. You know that murder is never the answer sweetie.”

“No, Laura, I did not murder the guy. At least I don’t think so. He grabbed my wrist after I told him to leave me alone and something happened. I don’t know what it was but I just felt this burst of energy flow through my body and the guy flew back and smashed into a car like Alex made your mom smash into the fridge.”

“What the hell?” Laura whispered to herself.

“I don’t understand it, I don’t like it, and I don’t want it.”

“Show me something else you know you can do.”

Rachel just nodded and then thrust her hand out at one of the lounge chairs on the beach. After about 10 seconds the chair exploded. It shattered into at least a billion little splinters. Then Rachel thrust her hand out at the sand nearby them and a big cloud of sand puffed up as she stirred it up with the magic. It didn’t stop when Rachel put down her hands though. A wooden board ripped out of the sand and flew right past Laura’s head. The waves were crashing into each other loudly. The sand was stirring up more and more and the lamp posts were flickering.

“Rachel stop I get it!”

“I can’t stop it, I can’t control it!”

Then suddenly one of the cars parked on the beach lifted in the air as though by a strong wind, flipped several times and then exploded.

Rachel’s hands were glowing. Like glow in the dark toys her hands were emitting a golden light. It was very faint and the only reason Laura could notice it was because she was staring intently at Rachel’s hands.

“Rach, just try to calm down and get back in the house we can sort all of this out soon but right now you need a tylenol and a good night’s sleep.” She yelled over the loud noises as the wind was blowing and the fire was crackling and things were flying all around.

Laura grabbed Rachel and held her hoping to calm her down and slowly all of the stuff stopped. The sand wasn’t blowing around anymore. The boards fell to the ground and everything else became peaceful.

“How do we tell Anna and Gabby?” Rachel asked.

“Don’t worry about that I’ll let them know, but we need to work on this because this power is dangerous and you need to learn to control it.”

Rachel just nodded.

“Thank you Laura.”

“Let’s go inside.”

Rachel and Laura walked side by side into the house, not knowing how they were going to explain the explosion to Anna and Gabby.

* * *

“What the hell was that?” Gabby asked as soon as they walked through the door.

“Yeah, what was that? It sounded like an explosion.” Anna asked, right behind Gabby.

“It was me.” Rachel said quietly.

“What do you mean it was you? Why would you explode something?” Gabby asked, confused.

“I don’t know what it is but all that stuff you saw Alex do in the video, I can do. I don’t know how or why but I can.”

They had a blank look on their face trying to comprehend the fact that all the stuff they had read about it in Alex’s notes were real. Were they all witches?

“Can you show us something?” Anna asked, curious to know more.

“That’s kinda what caused the explosion out there. It was her trying to show me what she can do.” Laura said.

“No it’s fine, I can try.” Rachel said quietly.

She lifted her hand towards the table and it pushed itself and all of the chairs into the fridge, then they went back to the place they were in before. Laura anxiously anticipated something big to happen like something exploding or catching fire but nothing happened, she had managed to control that.

“Wow, that’s weird but cool. How long have you known you could do that?”

“It happened for the first time today, some guy was bothering me and I told him to leave me alone and he flew back and smashed into a car. I was too scared to do anything so I just ran away.”

“You need to start like taking classes to control that or something.” Gabby suggested.

“Yeah totally let me down to the community college and take some Magic 101 classes.”

“I can help you.” Laura spoke up.

“How can you help me?”Rachel asked.

“Well you can like test on me and other things somewhere, we have to find out what type of witch you are though. We can test that out tomorrow.”

Rachel hugged Laura.

“Thank you.”

Boop Boop, Boop Boop. Badum Badum. Beep Beep. Dingggg

Je suis toujours regarder chiennes. -A

* * *

A black hooded person was pacing around in a small room, waiting for the printer to finish processing the request. Once the printer finished printing the person walked over to the machine and pulled out the papers.

On the papers were pill bottle labels made out to Laura Davidson.


	5. Murder in the First

Chapter 5, Murder in the First

Laura had told Rachel she would help her with the training and that she would. She spent 5 days and a few hundred dollars on setting up the perfect area for Rachel in her basement. Friday afternoon Laura knocked on Rachel’s front door.

“Hello Laura, can I help you?” Ashley Watson said as she opened the door.

Laura hated Ashley more than Alex hated plaid. She thought of Ashley the same way she thought of cockroaches and Hitler. She was a rude and disgusting person in Laura’s eyes. She knew that as soon as they found out Rachel was gay they would hurt her, physically or emotionally. When the time came, Laura was ready to pull out everything she knew Alex had on the family that didn’t hurt Rachel and use it against them because Rachel was her best friend.

Laura faked a smile and talked to Ashley in a tone that only the girls would recognize as Laura’s signature I’m-pretending-to-be-nice-but-on-the-inside-I-hope-you-die look.

“Yes, I was wondering if Rachel’s here? We were supposed to be having a sleepover with all four of us girls.”

“Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that.” Ashley said with an oh-how-silly-of-me look that made Laura’s desire to shove the heel of her stilettos into the woman’s throat even greater.

Ashley went upstairs and got Rachel, who came downstairs with her bag for the night.

They got in the car and started driving off as soon as possible.

“Rachel, I love you, but one of these days I may actually murder your mother.” Laura said while groaning.

Rachel just laughed in agreement. They drove to Laura’s house and once they got out, Rachel said hi to the family and then put her stuff in Laura’s room.

“So where is this training that you had set up for me?” Rachel asked.

“Wait until Anna and Gabby get here and for my family to leave. It’s probably not going to be very quiet so we’ll have to wait until it’s just us four.” Laura replied.

After about an hour and a half Laura’s family left to the country club and soon after that Gabby and Anna came over.

“Okay now let’s get started.” Laura said as she led the girls down to her basement.

Down in the basement there was something that looked like a carnival with a budget of $50 and there were about 6 different stands with something odd on them that didn’t make any sense.

“What is all of this?” Rachel asked, severely confused.

“This is how I’m finding out which type of witch you are. I’m gonna have you go to each of these and see which one works, if all of them work, then you’re an eternity witch. After we’ve found out what you are, I have training already thought out for each one of them.” Laura explained proudly.

“You are a strange teenage girl. What did you tell your parents you were doing down here?” Gabby asked.

“I just told them it was a science project, and even though they’ve got Doctorates from Harvard, they were stupid enough to believe it.”

“First station,” Laura began as she walked Rachel over to a stand that had a potted plant on it that was dead. “This is the one for life witches. Try to revive this plant and then try to heal the cut on my hand.”

“But you don’t have a cut on your hand.”

Laura pulled a knife out of her pocket and sliced across the palm of her hand.

“Laura, I’m going to have you institutionalized one of these days I swear.”

Rachel focused on the potted plant. She tried to get that feeling she got when she made the explosion occur at the beach house or when she threw the guy back into the car. Nothing came.

“Well now we have a dead plant and you have a bloody palm.”

Laura, being herself, whipped out a first aid kit where she cleaned and wrapped up her cut.

“Okay so life witch is a no.” She checked something off on the clipboard she pulled out of nowhere.

“Next station,” Laura began as she directed Rachel to stand next to the previous one. “This is the one for death witches.”

On the stand was a rat just scurrying around trying to find a way down.

“Kill it.” Laura ordered.

“What the hell no! I don’t want to kill it!”

“You’ve got to do it if you want to know what you are.”

Rachel thrust her hand out at the rat and concentrated hard. There was no feeling or rush.

“I guess that’s not it then,” Laura said, checking something off on her clipboard. She got in the rat’s face. “Well Mr. Whiskers, I guess you’re gonna be living with Gavin for a while.”

“Did you really name the rat Mr. Whiskers?” Anna asked.

Laura just nodded.

“Next station.”

She led Laura to a stand that had a cup of water, a box of matches, a blown up balloon, and a clump of dirt on it.

“This is the stand for elemental witches. Try any of these and see if they work.”

Rachel thrust out her hand and tried to control each element. She tried to make the cup of water have small waves, after lighting one of the matches, she tried to spread the fire a little bit, she tried moving the balloon around, and she tried lifting the dirt.

“Another fail.” Laura sounded disappointed almost as she checked off yet another item on her clipboard.

“This one is the time witch one. There’s no stand because you can’t really make time an object. So just try to slow it down or speed it up, or maybe stop it.”

Rachel closed her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to concentrate and figure out this test. She was exerting herself. She could tell she was trying to force her power to do something it couldn’t do. Once it started to hurt and she could feel sweat beading on her forehead she gave up and shook her head at Laura. Laura clicked her tongue and tapped her foot while she checked off something else on the clipboard.

“Well, it’s evident you’re also not an eternity witch so you’re either a Nature Witch or Spirit Witch.”

She brought her to the next station which was a rose in a vase.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Well if you were a nature witch you could make the plant grow, or die, or make it healthier in some way.”

Rachel concentrated pretty hard on the rose but after a few minutes gave up, realizing it wasn’t going to work.

“Well then I’m a spirit witch I guess.” Rachel said.

“Nope, we don’t know that for a fact, you have to test it out.”

“Okay where’s the station?”

Laura stepped forward.

“I’m the station.”

“What do you mean you’re the station?”

“I mean I’m the station. You need a human for this because spirit witches control humans. So try to force me to do something.”

Rachel thrust her hand out and that was when she felt it. That rush of adrenaline and euphoria. The feeling of power. Laura began walking forward robotically as she tried to fight  Rachel’s control.

“Okay Rach, we get it, you can stop now.”

Rachel just laughed at her.

“No, I’m going to have fun with this.”

Then Rachel began to make Laura do the chicken dance, which had them all laughing so hard they were crying.

“Okay, you’ve had your fun, now stop.”

Rachel freed Laura and wiped her tears.

“That was amazing.” Gabby said, still somewhat laughing.

“Well, if all of you would be mature, Rachel now has to do training. I’ve gathered all of the powers that spirit witches possess and have set up things to help you practice each power. You can control a person’s mind and body. You can control their movements, their blood temperature, if their eyes are open or closed. Stuff like that. So for that I’ll have you practice on me since I’ll be your usual training buddy. You can read minds so I’ll have you read all of ours. You can also change somebody’s mind so you’ll try that out too. You can create force fields and turn invisible which we’ll be testing. Any questions?”

“Nope, you basically covered it all.”

Laura  stood in front of Rachel with her arms out, ready to let Rachel practice on her. She made Laura walk around the room and then jog, she made her blood temperature rise and lower slightly. She made her blink rapidly.

“How’d I do?” Rachel asked, out of breath and sweating from using so much power.

“You’re doing fine, next step.”

Rachel read all of their minds and found that Gabby was thinking about going shopping, Anna was thinking about the boy Brandon she had met at the party, and Laura was thinking about starting a magic class.

“Gabby you can go shopping later, Anna just call the boy, and Laura if you open a magic class I will kill you.”

Laura just nodded her head and smiled.

“Good, now change our minds.”

This was extra hard for Rachel. She had to personally get into their full thoughts, which  were all jumbled around like marbles. She finally found a way to alter all of the thoughts slightly to make a full thought change, which was for Gabby to think less of shopping and more of giving Rachel a foot massage.

“I’m so not giving you a foot massage.” Gabby said.

She went and made Anna think about clowns which she was terrified of, and made Laura think of Christopher which made her blush deeply.

“Okay good job, now last step is force fields and invisibility. We’ll do invisibility first and then force fields.”

Rachel took a deep breath and focused as much as she could. She didn’t know what to think of so she just let her mind flow clearly, she let any and all cluttered thoughts out and soon she heard Anna,Gabby, and Laura gasping.

“What is it?”

“Rachel, we can’t see you!” Gabby exclaimed.

Rachel looked down and couldn’t see her body, only the floor. She let herself think properly again and focused more on reality and felt herself become visible again.

“Next is force fields, I’m going to do a few things and you may or may not have to think fast. First, try to produce a force field a few times to get the hang of it.”

Rachel tried her best to conjure a force field and after looking around she saw a purple bubble around her that was swirling and semi-transparent. Then she lowered it and raised it again a few times until she got the hang of it.

“Okay now I’m going to toss some things at you.”

Laura tossed a baseball softly which she easily deflected away. She tossed a few more things like that and Rachel was doing good.

“Think fast!” Laura exclaimed when she knew Rachel was off guard.

Laura threw a pocket knife at her. In the heat of the moment Rachel conjured a barely sufficient force field that slowed the knife enough that it hit her in the cheek softly and fell to the ground.

“You could have killed me what the hell!”

“But you didn’t die, I think that’s the key point. You can do this Rach.”

* * *

Anna didn’t like her mother. She still had some love for her, but all of the bad things her mother had done were too much for Anna to handle and it just upset her to the point where she could never look at her mother the same way anymore.

“Hi sweetie.” Anna’s mom said as she walked down the stairs.

Anna just glared at her and put her earphones in, pretending that she never heard her even though it was obvious that she had.

“Anna, can you please talk to me?”

“No mom, I’m not going to talk to you. What you did last month was beyond horrible. You’d probably get fired if I told Cynthia, because of how disgusted she’d be by you. Why would she want to be near you if she knew? I don’t even want to be near you!”

“Anna, I made a mistake!”

“No, mom you didn’t,” Anna was fuming. “A mistake is me dropping a cup or Brittany knocking over a lamp. What you did was you trying to save your own ass!”

“Anna, you don’t understand. You know I couldn’t tell your father what happened and had the abortion normally. I just couldn’t it would destroy him.”

“Oh you act like you actually care about anybody but yourself. I’m ashamed to call you my mother.”

“Anna please forgive me. I’ll do anything to make it up to you.”

“No, I don’t want anything from you. You had an affair and cheated on dad! And when you got pregnant from it, you threw yourself down the stairs as some at-home abortion and told the hospital you tripped down the stairs! I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. You can try but I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you.”

With that Anna turned around and walked outside, slamming the door behind her.

* * *

It was Saturday night and Laura was getting ready for her date with Christopher. Before she got in the shower, she did a face mask to cleanse her skin and picked out her outfit for the date; a white floral cocktail dress with a black leather jacket and black velvet pumps. Then she did her makeup and  her hair so it cascaded down her back and shoulders in dirty blonde waves. Right on time, she heard the doorbell ring. She looked in the mirror and made sure she looked her best and then walked downstairs to greet Christopher.

When she opened the door, she was happy and smirked at the fact that his jaw practically dropped to the floor.

“You look . . . um . . . amazing.”

“Thank you.” She said as she closed the door behind her and he walked her to the car.

The car ride to the restaurant was just filled with small talk and tension as they both struggled to find anything to talk about. They got to the restaurant; a large restaurant that probably would cost him a few hundred dollars by the end of the night. It was the nicest one in Briarwood.

The waiter seated them immediately, he had apparently made reservations. She noted that mentally, it made him slightly better.

“I’m sorry I was so awkward in the car and didn’t talk much. I was just in shock because I figured you would have laughed in my face and told me to go home when you answered the door.” He said, his cheeks coloring a little bit.

“Oh come on, I’m not that awful.” She joked.

“No it’s not that. It’s just that you’re Laura Davidson. I mean I feel like I won the lottery being able to have dinner with you.”

“You’re joking right? I’m soooo far from special.”

“Please tell me you’re joking. I remember always seeing you walk down that hallway with Alex and the girls and just wishing you would wake up and realize that somehow you were in love with me.”

“You even noticed me when I was next to Alex? He made anybody who was interested in boys swoon. And the people who weren’t interested in him wanted to be him.”

“I hardly even noticed him. All I really saw was you. It’s probably going to sound creepy but I’ve liked you for a few years. Every time you walked down that hallway I just thought that you were more than perfect. I thought you were this hybrid of a woman and an angel who just couldn’t be anything less than amazing. You were always this charismatic, perfectionist who just couldn’t see herself the way I could.”

Laura was lost in his words. He had definitely gotten her. She was putty in his hands. Nobody had ever talked to her like that. Nobody had ever made her feel all warm and fuzzy like that. Not even Jeremy. Especially not Jeremy, he just made her feel like a trophy.

The waiter came by and took their orders and then left, meanwhile all Laura could think about was how she had totally been overlooking such an amazing boy for so long.

“I really don’t know what to say.” She said, looking down, at a loss for words.

“Then don’t speak.” He said.

Before she could ask what he meant, he pressed his lips against hers gently, as though with caution. It could have been weeks or years that passed while they kissed but all she could think of was how right it felt to have his lips on hers and to be connected with him.

Boop Boop, Boop Boop

Laura broke apart and looked down at her phone. There was an attachment of a picture of her and Christopher kissing along with the message:

You may not kiss and tell but I do. I’m ALWAYS watching Laura. Now you’re my puppet. Do what I say or Jeremy will get this when you least expect it. -A

* * *

Gabby was steadily looking through the big scrapbook Rachel had put together. She saw more photos of  their trip to Disneyworld, Alex’s 14th birthday party where his mom had actually closed down the local amusement park just for the five of them but kept the concession stands stocked for whatever they wanted, their lunch table on Valentine’s day of Freshman year when they had all received enough valentines and candy grams to cover the table in a mountain, Alex’s pool party he had thrown over the summer where nearly everybody they had gone to school with came to, and lastly their sleepover that Alex had put together for the five of them about 3 months before his death, right before the end of the school year.

*flashback*

It was the weekend before the last week of school and Alex wanted their first year of high school to be memorable so he had a sleepover for all of them to gather all of their memories and things like that. Gabby was the first to arrive at Alex’s house.

“Hey Gabby.” He said as she walked through the door in his usual bitchy tone.

“Hey Alex,” She said, giving him a hug. “Where are the other girls?”

“Not sure, they should’ve been here five minutes ago. At least you’re on time, shows you’re actually good for something.”

She tried to pretend like that comment didn’t affect her, but she was sure that was a failed attempt.

“Gabby why do you try so hard?” He asked.

“Try so hard to do what?”

“To be perfect. You clearly try. Every single day you’ve changed something about yourself to make yourself a little more perfect in your eyes.”

“I’m just trying to look better, I think everybody wants that.” She said with a light chuckle hoping to break the tension.

She could tell Alex was in bitch mode and when he was like this he could make somebody with the highest self-esteem in the world hate themselves by the end of the night.

“Well Gabby, you can try to be perfect, but it’s going to be hard. Because you’re pudgy, and unkempt. No matter what you wear, how you style your hair, or how you do your makeup, noone will notice you. At least not without me.”

His words cut through her like knives. She felt like crying. Everytime he said things like that to her, she believed him. He just stood there with a smirk on his face. She got up shakily and went to the bathroom.

Laura, Anna, and Rachel came together and rang the doorbell, hoping Gabby was already there.

“Hey guys.” He said as he let them in and closed the door.

“Where’s Gabby?” Anna asked.

“She went to the bathroom a few minutes ago, I’ll go check on her and let her know you guys are here.” He said.

He went to the bathroom she had gone into and knocked on the door a few times.

“Gabby, are you okay in there?”

There was no answer so he burst in and saw her leaning over the toilet with her fingers down her throat.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

She got up quickly and wiped her mouth.

“N-n-nothing.”

“Gabby, you were just making yourself puke. What the hell?”

“Please don’t tell the girls, please Alex, I’ll do anything you want, just don’t tell them please.”

“Oh calm down, I’m not telling anybody. Clean yourself up, there are spare toothbrushes in the drawer and toothpaste is behind the mirror.”

He walked out of the bathroom and just told the girls Gabby would be out in a minute. After a few minutes of everybody setting up the beds in the living room (Alex’s mom had ordered mattresses for whenever they had sleepovers like this so she had already laid out the beds before she left for work) Gabby came out of the bathroom and said her hello’s and began making her bed too.

When they were all done they sat down and started talking about all the usual stuff they talk about. About halfway through the movie they were watching, Alex tapped on Gabby’s shoulder. She looked over to see what he wanted.

He smirked at her and then pretended to shove his finger down his throat and laughed.

All the blood drained out of her face. Her heart rate was getting much faster, and she felt like she was sinking down into a bottomless ocean.

“It’s okay, it’ll be all fine soon Gabby.” He chuckled.

*flashback end*

With the way he treated her, she was somewhat relieved he was dead. He made her feel less than worthless that day. But sometimes he could make her feel like she was even more perfect than he was. It was odd and awful how up and down their friendship was.

Beep Beep

Parting is such sweet sorrow that I say goodbye till it be morrow. -A

* * *

Laura had been returning from her date as she walked along the side of the road. Chris had offered to drive her home, but she wanted to take a night walk and clear her head. She was sure the police were investigating her house thoroughly at the moment. She didn’t understand why the police thought she could have anything to do with the murder of her best friend. She was checking her phone and texting back some people when she felt a large hand on her shoulder. She looked up and saw two officers.

“Laura Davidson?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I’m Officer Wayne, you’re under arrest for the murder of Alex VanLinor. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you can not afford an attorney one will be appointed to you. Do you understand your rights?”

She just nodded her head and tried to hold back tears, at a complete loss for what to do.

* * *

Two days had passed since Laura was arrested for Alex’s murder. Anna, Rachel, and Gabby were all waiting anxiously both days for any news. They weren’t allowed to visit her because she wasn’t fully in the system yet. Laura’s dad was a lawyer and was steadily building up a defense for her case. They had apparently found the knife used to murder Alex in her bedroom hidden in a fake drawer bottom.

“When will we be able to visit her?” Rachel asked.

All of the girls were laying in Anna’s bedroom.

“This website says that she should be fully in the system in a week or two.” Anna replied, steadily scrolling through websites.

“Aside from somebody confessing to the murder, what could get her out?” Gabby asked.

“An alibi, evidence of somebody else being at Alex’s house that morning, shit like that.”

The girls spent a few hours pouring through websites, printing out papers and looking through them, and just everything they could do to get Laura off. They knew that she couldn’t do something like this.

Beep Beep, Badum Badum, Dingggg

Tick Tock, Bitches. Laura’s not prison material. -A

* * *

Adam Davidson was working overtime to clear his daughter’s name. On Tuesday afternoon, he was in the police station, building Laura’s defense when he heard something that set his nerves on overdrive:

“The test results have been returned for the DNA found at the murder scene.”

He knew they could only be talking about Alex’s murder and was tuned in to anymore possible conversation, but he heard none. He got up from the desk and went over to the cop who received the envelope containing the lab results.

“Excuse me, are those lab results of the DNA found at the VanLinor murder scene?”

“That’s confidential information sir, how does it pertain to you?”

“I’m the father and attorney of the girl behind bars for that murder right now.”

The cop just gave an apologetic look and walked off to the detective’s office. After about five minutes, Detective Marlin came out of his office and was walking to his squad car.

“What’s going on!?” Adam asked.

“Mr. Davidson, I’m sorry I didn’t see you. The test results came back. The test results of DNA came back, you’re daughter’s DNA didn’t match any of the DNA found there, you’re daughter is free to go, I’m on my way to release her right now,”

Adam buried his face in his hands and let out a deep sigh of relief knowing that Laura would be able to sleep in her own bed tonight.

* * *

Mr. Davidson had called Anna’s mom almost immediately and informed her of Laura’s innocence. From there, Alyssa told her daughter about it and then Anna called Gabby and Rachel and had them meet up outside of the county holding cell. They waited patiently for about 20 minutes.

“When is she going to be out?” Rachel asked nervously.

“She still has to sign papers and shit.” Anna replied, staring at the door.

Then the doors opened and Laura walked out. She had no makeup on, her hair was tangled and in a messy bun, and she was wearing blue sweatpants and a faded pink t-shirt. As soon as she saw the girls she ran towards them. The other girls were going to run too but Rachel had already taken off and nearly knocked Laura over with the force of the hug she gave her.

“Oh my God Laura, we missed you so much.” Rachel said, choking back tears.

“It’s so bad in there. I was only in the detention center but it’s lonely and cold and you have to pee in front of whoever is there guarding you and it’s awful.” Laura sobbed.

Anna and Gabby had caught up to them now and it was a group hug at this point.

“What proved you were innocent?” Gabby asked.

“I don’t know.”

Laura called her dad over.

“Dad, what proved that I didn’t kill him?”

“They had gotten all the DNA from the crime scene and they found the DNA of the killer, there was blood in several areas throughout the house.”

“Well whose DNA was it?!” Rachel asked loudly.

“They can’t trace it to anybody,” He paused after seeing all of their confused faces. “Whoever it was, isn’t in the system right now so their DNA wouldn’t be traceable.”

He walked away to talk to the police and the girls turned to each other.

“A is amping up their moves.” Laura said.

“You think this was A?” Anna asked.

“Of course it’s A,” Laura said. “Who else would plant Alex’s murder weapon in my room?”

“This has to be A. Why does he, she, it want to hurt us anyways?” Gabby asked.

“We let Alex do all that stuff to people.” Rachel said in a weak, quiet voice.

“That’s not an excuse and we couldn’t control Alex, he did what he wanted.” Laura replied.

“Well anyways, we need to stop this person. First it’s framing one of us for murder, what next? Forcing us to kill somebody? Killing one of us? I can’t deal with this anymore.” Gabby said in one breath.

“We have to try to find a way to end this. We need to find out who this bitch is and stop her.” Anna said.

“Why are you so sure it’s a girl?” Laura asked.

“I don’t know, it just feels like a girl, you know?”

“Rachel, we need to start training you more. Maybe if you get powerful enough with your magic we can use it to find out who this person is and kill them.” Laura said with determination.

“Woah, I don’t know if I’m up for murder. Maybe like injuring or maiming.”

“Fine,” Laura said in an ‘I never get to have any fun’ tone. “Tomorrow, we’ll start more of your training, thank God I already had some stuff set up for you to continue with it.”

“Okay, Anna, Gabby, are you two coming?” Rachel asked.

“Yeah sure, we’ll be there.” Gabby answered for both of them.

“This bitch is going down.”

Boop Boop, Boop Boop, Badum Badum, Dingggg, Beep Beep

They all looked down at their phones and in unison read aloud the text message.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. I guess i’ll have better luck next time bitches. -A

* * *

A black hooded person is walking towards a small television sitting atop a black television stand. They connected a laptop to the television and then pulled up a screen where they were viewing what looked like camera footage of a restaurant. They rewinded it to about three days ago where a blonde girl named Laura Davidson and a brunette boy named Christopher Jackman were sitting and having a dinner date where they shared a kiss. The person watching rewinded the kiss and watched it over and over again.

 


	6. Freak Show

Chapter 6, Freak Show

Anna had just finished soccer practice and as usual, she was the only one who bothered to shower at the gym instead of at home. She went into the gym’s locker room and got undressed. After putting her dirty soccer uniform in her locker, she got in the shower.

The only reason she had decided to stay behind and shower there was because the mere sight of her mother disgusted her. Ever since Alex told her about everything that had happened, she could hardly tolerate being around her mom. So she started staying the night with friends as much as possible, showering at the gym, going for jogs later, etc. Hell, she even joined the journalism club to stay after school.

She just couldn’t stay around and look at this woman who had always been her role model and somebody she could trust and love. She couldn’t do it because she felt if she got to spend time with her mom, she may forgive her . . . and she couldn’t let herself do that.  At least, not yet.

She quickly washed and shampooed herself and got out and went over to her locker. She put in the familiar locker combo and then coughed as she caught a whiff of something. She looked to the air vent and saw a white smoke spilling out and slowly filling up the room .

A few coughs soon turned into her on her hands and knees gasping and retching for breath until her vision turned black and she collapsed. When she was finally unconscious, a black hooded figure walked over to her body and picked her up, carrying her away.

* * *

Rachel loved her volunteer service. Giving back to the community was one of her favorite things to do. So being able to teach an art class to orphans in Seattle was perfect for her. Her and Laura  had trained about four times and she was getting the hang of teleportation so she could teleport to Seattle and just need a bit of rest.

On Saturday morning, she had her usual routine where she’d get as much rest as possible the night before and teleport there in the morning.

She was volunteering at the Seattle Children’s Home where she was teaching over a hundred kids from ages seven to fifteen. This was the second lesson and she had moved from basic painting to clay sculptures. The kids all caught on quickly and loved the lessons. Rachel, being the do-gooder, nice person she was, was more than happy to give the kids the art lessons as long as they were happy. When the class was done, she had to leave and was ready to go home. She cleaned up behind them and then went out to the parking lot to make it seem like she was getting into a car.

As she stopped and was about to teleport, she felt a hand clamp around her mouth with a wet cloth. She smelled a sweet liquid on the cloth and her mind almost instantly registered it as chloroform. She had studied it once in science. First, you go numb. That was happening to her, she couldn’t feel anything. Then her vision got blurry and all of the noises sounded far away. Then eventually, she blacked out. The black hooded figure picked up her body and carried her away.

* * *

Gabby was having one of her movie nights with her friend Skyler McCloud. She was one of Gabby’s only close friends outside of the group and they liked to spend as much time together as possible. Tonight they were seeing Taken 2, which they had been obsessing over for a while because Taken was one of their favorite movies. They bought a ridiculous amount of candy, popcorn, and soda and sat through the movie. When it was over, they disposed of the candy and parted their ways. Gabby was walking home from the movies since Skyler drove her there and she didn’t feel like sitting in a car with Skyler after a movie. All she did was talk and it was aggravating.

She walked along the sidewalk, enjoying the breeze from the air. She was just appreciative her mom was letting her go out after what happened with Alex. As she was walking she bumped into somebody but before she could look up and fully see who it was they had pressed a wet cloth against her face. She struggled to break free, but the person was stronger than she was and she ended up passing out. Once she passed out, the black hooded figured carried her way.

* * *

Laura needed a good swim to get her mind off of everything. In that cell she felt so powerless. As soon as the guard closed the cell door she felt like breaking down. However, if there was one thing she had learned from Alex, it was never to let yourself seem weak. So she sucked up the tears and sat on the cell bed for those three days and pretended like she couldn’t care less about the fact that she was in a temporary jail.

Exercise was one thing that had always gotten her mind off of things. She only went jogging and swimming though, she hated all other sports. So today was a day where she’d spend a few hours in the pool doing laps, tanning, and relaxing and she couldn’t feel more at peace.

She glided across the pool slowly on her back, just soaking in the sun that was beating down on her tan skin. This was one of the few times she had felt calm since Alex’s death. It was good for her. A temporary escape. She began doing laps again.

Back and forth, back and forth, until her thighs were screaming in pain. She decided she was going to do one last lap and then be done with it. She hit one wall and then she was on her way to the other. Once she reached that wall she was ready to get out. She put her hands on the concrete and was lifting herself up. Halfway up she felt a hand press on her head and push her back under. She was struggling and trying her best to get out of their grip as they continued to hold her under. She looked up and opened her eyes, but all she could see through the chlorinated water was a black figure. Finally, her body shut down and she slumped underwater only to be pulled out and carried away by the black figure.

* * *

Anna was the first one to wake up. She woke up groggily with a headache and was slightly nauseous. She looked next to her and saw Rachel, Laura, and Gabby, all unconscious. She reached out a hand and shook Gabby trying to get her to wake up. After a few shakes Gabby woke up just as groggy and nauseous. They both then woke up Laura and Rachel and stood up and looked around.

“Where the hell are we?” Laura asked as she looked around.

They were in what looked like an abandoned circus. There was a ferris wheel to their left a little ways that had vines growing up around it with dust and mold caked on to it. To their right was a carousel. All of the horses there had eyes that had either fallen out or were faded making them look dead. Similar to the ferris wheel, the carousel had vines growing around it and other debris scattered all on and around it. In front of them was a row of game booths and then a Big Top tent that was massive. It was ridiculously wide and almost twice as long. They looked behind them and saw what looked like an exit.

“Let’s go, this place creeps me out.” Gabby suggested and started walking towards the exit.

When she reached the exit a sound like thunder, but much quieter hit all of their ears and Gabby was thrown back, landing on the ground with a loud and hard ‘thud.’

“Gabby are you okay!?” Anna exclaimed as she rushed over to her friend.

She was about to ask why Rachel and Laura weren’t coming to see Gabby when she saw them staring at the exit. There was a large dome covering them and it looked like heat waves all around them. Laura picked up a rock and tossed it at the exit. When the rock hit the dome it blasted backwards and hit the ground a little farther from where Gabby landed. As soon as it hit the dome, the heatwaves flared up, turned purple, and then started crackling with what looked like lightning.

“Well we’re definitely not getting out of here anytime soon.” Laura said in defeat.

Then suddenly a voice echoed around them as though it came from the sky. It was robotic and feminine.

“Hello.”

Gabby pulled her phone out of back pocket and looked at it.

“No Gabby it isn’t Siri.” Anna said.

Gabby just looked embarrassed and put her phone back.

“Today you’re going to explore the circus. Welcome to the Freak Show.”

Then a force field was put on the left and right of the girls making it so their only way to go was through the circus. The girls walked ahead, all sticking together. They passed some of the carnival booths, which just had abandoned arcade games like toss the ring on the bottle and the game where you squirt water into a fish’s mouth to blow up a balloon. Once they reached the big top, they were all anxious. Laura pulled back the curtain entrance and all they saw was a dark hallway that was dimly lit with a staircase at the end.

Rachel was leading the group through the dark hallway and up the stairs until they saw a door at the end of the second floor hallway.

“I’m not opening that, this place is creepy.” Gabby said, hiding behind Anna and in front of Laura.

Anna stepped forward and opened the door. They all stepped inside and saw a bright room that was small enough to fit maybe two California king beds tightly. There was what looked like a ticket dispenser with a slot small enough for a credit card or driver’s license.

“Does A want us to pay them? I mean if A wants a little bit of money to get me the fuck out of this creepy circus I’m good with that.” Laura said, pulling her credit card out of her pocket.

Then the machine lit up a dark shade of red and out popped a card that looked like a driver’s license. The girls walked over to it and Anna pulled it out.

It showed a picture of Anna dressed and about to leave the locker room after she got dressed. It looked like it had been taken from behind one of the shower curtains. Next to her little square picture was the name: Anna Claire Romano. Below her name and picture were the words:

“Come one”

The machine lit up again with a light shade of blue and out popped another card. Laura grabbed it and saw that it was her card. There was a picture of her in the pool doing laps, it looked like it was taken from where she had been pushed under. Next to the square was the name: Laura Elizabeth Davidson. Below her name and picture were the words:

“Come all.”

The machine lit up once more in purple and this time Rachel’s card popped out. She grabbed it and saw a picture of her walking to the parking lot from the orphanage. Next to the picture was the name: Rachel Fay Watson. Under her name and picture were the words:

“To the”

The machine lit up one last time in green and Gabby’s card came out. Gabby walked over and grabbed it. She saw the picture of her walking out of the movies, checking her phone. Then her name: Gabrielle Belle Moody. Under her name and picture were the words:

“Freak Show.”

The girls put their cards together to see all of the words combined and then in unison they said:

“Come one, come all. To the freak show.”

Then the floor fell out beneath them.

* * *

They fell about 10 feet to a wooden ground covered by a thin layer of sand. The fall knocked out Gabby and Rachel, but Laura and Anna were just temporarily dazed. Then somebody came towards them. They expected to see the same black hooded figure from earlier in the day, but they saw somebody in a red trench coat with a black full-face mask and black leggings with black stiletto boots on. The person put each of them, except for Anna, in chairs that they hadn’t noticed before. When they looked around they saw they were sitting on a small stage and in the center of the stage was a rectangular box, similar to a coffin. The person in the red coat lifted up a dazed Anna and guided her to the box where the person in the red coat opened the top up and helped her into it. When Anna had laid in it, the person in the red coat closed it and locked it.

The person walked away and went up into a staircase they hadn’t noticed was there before. After a minute they saw what looked like a theatre balcony where they saw the black hooded person. Then the person in the red coat came and stood next to them and watched the scene unfold. The black hooded figure pressed a button and the ground raised below the box Anna was in.

Once the box began rising, Anna came to her senses. She started banging on the walls of the box screaming for help. Then the girls all came around and became fully conscious and aware of what was going on. The same robotic female voice echoed around them.

“Get her out of the box or she dies.”

Once the voice cut off, a saw began lowering from the ceiling slowly and as it continued to lower, it turned on, getting closer and closer to the box Anna was in. The girls all launched up out of their seats and ran to the box. They started banging on it and looking for ways to break the locks or pick them but to no avail. Anna was still screaming and banging on the box, but it was made sturdily and she wasn’t going to be able to get out by herself.

“Rachel your magic!” Gabby yelled.

“I don’t know if I’ve practiced enough to do that, I could hurt her!”

“Just focus on the locks and use telekinesis to rip them off!”

Rachel threw out her hand and focused heavily on the locks, imagining ripping them off. She had a million thoughts running through her mind and was having trouble focusing. One of the locks looked like it was tightening or crumbling from the inside. She tried to focus more on the locks and then she felt that familiar surge of power flow through her body and not only did the locks explode, but the box itself exploded. Rachel was able to think fast and put a force field in front of the girls so the wood didn’t impale and kill them.

Anna got out of the box and immediately hugged Gabby.

“The saw’s still coming down but we don’t have to worry about it anymore, how do we get out of here?” Laura asked.

The voice echoed out again.

“Please exit through the doorway to your left.”

Once the voice stopped, a door opened to their left with the person in the red coat standing at the entrance. Then the person continued down the hallway and disappeared from sight. The girls walked down the hallway. It was pitch black and they could barely see where they were going. If it weren’t for the walls on either side of them they probably would’ve gotten lost and wandered. Once they reached the end of the hallway, the door opened and they stepped into what was definitely not an exit to home.

* * *

The girls stepped into what looked like a lion taming pit. There was a ring around it where the viewers would watch whatever was going on; lion taming, elephants playing, bears playing, etc. When they got there the person in the red coat sat them all down at different parts of the ring except for Rachel. When she got to Rachel, instead of sitting her down, she went behind Rachel.

“What are you doing?” Rachel asked.

Then the person pushed her and she fell back into the pit. She looked around her and saw the four gates on the four points of the arena raise. Then four, fully grown lions walked out towards Rachel. She along with the other girls were in shock. Their hearts were racing and they were all scared.

“Anna, Laura, and Gabby. You must watch as Rachel tries to defeat the lions or escape them. Good luck.”

The girls were about to pull Rachel out of the pit when they felt a force field project around them and hold them in place. All they could do now was watch Rachel in the pit.

Then the lions lunged at her. She ran towards the wall right behind her and tried to climb up it but one of the lions caught her pant leg with its paw and threw her backwards, slamming her on the ground and knocking the breath out of her. Black spots danced in her eyes and her vision went blurry for a second but then she was able to get up and fight back. Then she remembered something she had read in Alex’s notes about Spirit Witches.

“Spirit Witches have full power over any living creature’s mind and body.”

She reached out towards the lions and focused on their minds. After a second or two, she was in their minds, all of their thoughts swirling around and crashing just like a human’s. And then as though it was a natural instinct she wiped their minds clean. The lions all rolled over on their backs and started licking their paws as though to clean them.

Rachel stepped back and pressed herself against the wall and slid down it, letting out a puff of air as she finally felt safe and relaxed. Then she grabbed the ledge of the wall and pulled herself up.

She ran around the ring and to the girls, who were still being held down by the force fields. They tried to push against them for a minute until the force fields were taken down by either the person in the black hoodie or the person in the red coat.

“Please exit through the door on the other side of the ring and proceed to the next circus act.”

The girls looked around nervously for either the person in the black hoodie or the person in the red coat but they saw nothing.

“I don’t want to do this anymore, I don’t like circuses.” Gabby whispered in a scared voice.

“The only way we’re going to get out of here is if we push through all of these things. Let’s just get this over with.” Laura said, in a tone that implied she was both scared and angry.

* * *

The girls walked through the door and stepped into what looked like another lion pit. The person in the red coat was waiting for them behind the door. They directed Anna, Laura, and Rachel into different seats where almost immediately, a force field projected around them. Then the person guided Gabby to the pit and pushed her in, like they pushed in Rachel.

Gabby looked around, expecting lions to come out, but there were no gates, just a pair of oak double doors right in front of her. Then they all heard a buzz and the doors opened and out stepped Gabby’s worst fear: a clown.

Not just a circus clown but something straight out of a Stephen King book. It had what looked like blood smeared down it’s face and body, it was wielding a knife, and had the typical horror clown costume on. Gabby froze on the spot, not knowing what to do.

“Anna, Laura, and Rachel will have to try to find the button to open the door the clown entered from. The clown is trying to kill you and if it kills you before the girls open the door then that’s just bad luck on your part.” The robotic female voice echoed throughout the lion pit.

Then the clown came running at Gabby. She sidestepped him and screamed and tried to run to the doors but tripped.

I’m so not going to be that girl in the horror movie.

She launched herself up and ran to the doors, trying to break them but she realized too late the doors were metal and not really oak. She just barely missed the knife of the clown, which hit the metal next to her ear. She pushed him to the wall and ran to the ring. While Gabby was running from the clown the other girls were intensely searching for a button but as hard and thorough as they looked they couldn’t see anything similar to a remote.

Gabby had hoisted herself halfway up the wall when she felt the knife slice her leg.

“Ow! Shit!” She exclaimed in pain.

Then she used her other foot to kick the clown in the face and hoisted herself up the rest of the way. She tried running to the girls but as soon as she started walking the clown hoisted himself up on the ring with his knife. Gabby remembered something she had learned in a karate class she took when she was seven. She hoped it would still work.

The clown slashed at her and she ducked under the blade and then kicked him in the shin, throwing him off balance, and then kicked him in the side of the head. The blow knocked him over the side of the ring and onto the hard dirt floor. Gabby could tell as soon as he hit the dirt floor, she’d done much more than knock him out. A small pool of blood began growing around his head.

Anna, Laura, and Rachel ran over to Gabby who was completely frozen in shock.

“Gabby it’s not your fault, he was trying to kill you, you had to do it.” Anna reassured her as she held her.

“We need to get out of here, I’ll have a pity party later.” Gabby said, making herself seem stronger than she felt.

Then the person in the red coat came up next to them. They all jumped, realizing the person was next to them. Then the person reached a black gloved hand into Rachel’s cardigan pocket and pulled out the button and pressed it.

“It was in my pocket. It was seriously in my fucking pocket.” Rachel said, completely aggravated that it was right under their noses and they couldn’t find it.

“Proceed through the door to the next game.”

The girls went down in the pit and through the door to whatever was waiting for them on the other side.

* * *

The girls walked out into an arena where the trapeze artists perform. There was the tightrope where they swing from and all of the seats where the spectators would sit. The person in the red coat was right behind them and closed the door and then led Anna, Rachel, and Gabby to their seats before leading Laura to the tightrope.

“I don’t want to do this.” Laura said.

She was about to walk down the ladder when the person in the red coat pulled a gun from their pocket and aimed it at her. She froze in place and began climbing up the ladder. After a few minutes, she made it to the tightrope.

“Don’t I get a safety harness or safety net?” Laura asked.

The voice echoed out.

“If you die, it’s your fault. Good luck.”

Laura took a deep breath and began walking along the tightrope, holding her arms out to keep balance. She was trying her hardest not to look down, but it was like looking at a car accident. She looked down and almost lost her balance. Laura was smart and she knew how to get through this. She regained her balance. She was about ¾ of the way across and she was getting more nervous. Then the person in the red coat pulled out a gun and fired to the roof. This threw Laura off.

She wobbled nervously and tried to run the rest of the way but that was hard to do on a tightrope and she  wasn’t well balanced anyways, but the gunshot was what did it for her. She wobbled from side to side and then fell to her death.

She expected to fall until she blacked out and died, but she hit an invisible barrier about two feet below the tightrope. When she hit it, she didn’t get zapped and thrown back like the force field outside, she was just suspended up as though she was standing on solid ground.

The girls all screamed when she fell, but when she hit the force field they all calmed down and took a breath.

“Since you failed to complete the task, I’m going to lower you to the ground and then you will proceed through the door to the next area.” The voice echoed out.

A door opened and they walked through it, hoping this was the end.

* * *

The girls walked into another room, but this one was small, like the card room. They had walked upstairs to get here so they expected it to be another trapdoor situation. When they turned around, they realized that they had been looking at the wrong wall. In front of them was a giant dollhouse with five rooms, each big enough to be an actual room. There were walls blocking the actual rooms so they couldn’t see what was inside but they knew that whatever was in there was going to be unpleasant.

The girls looked behind them and saw small tables with four seats. In the seats were pillow-like mannequins and on each of their heads was one of the girls names written in red paint.

“Please enter your rooms and find your surprises.” The voice echoed.

They wondered what it meant by their rooms. Then they saw on each of the doors a sign with one of their names on it. Anna and Gabby walked down the stairs to their rooms and Laura and Anna walked straight ahead to their rooms.

* * *

Anna opened the door and stepped into her room. When she stepped inside she was shocked. Instead of a normal room like she had expected, it was something that looked like a mental hospital patient’s room. There was the white bed with the bars on it that looked like something right out of a psych ward. The nightstand, the air conditioning system, and the desk next to the door. On the bed was another pillow-like mannequin with her name painted on it’s head. Was A implying that she was going to be in a mental hospital? Or was A going to put her in a mental hospital?

* * *

Gabby was the second to go into her room. She stepped inside and saw a large bathroom. There was a jacuzzi bathtub, a large sink with one of those hollywood mirrors with lightbulbs around the rim, and a large counter space filled with cosmetics. When she looked at the toilet, her heart dropped and she almost collapsed. There was another mannequin with her name painted on the head, but this one had little to no foam in it, presenting a figure similar to an abnormally skinny person and it was bent over a toilet. She knew exactly what A meant by this. A was referencing a time when Gabby had made herself throw up everyday for two weeks straight. It was one of her many steps on her journey to become as perfect as the other girls.

However, the last day was the worst, because it was the last time she had done it and this time she passed out and right before she felt like she was going to die and it was the most awful and horrifying experience she’d ever had. It was one that only Alex knew about, or so she thought.

* * *

Rachel didn’t know what to expect when she walked through the door of her room. Inside was an exact model replica of her room down to the last scuff mark on her desk chair. The worst thing about it was her mannequin. It was hanging from the ceiling from a noose with a kicked stool next to it. She put her hands over her mouth and gasped in shock when she saw it. What was A trying to say? She wasn’t suicidal, she’d never even really thought about suicide. What was A playing at?

* * *

Laura had been the last person to go in her room. She was hesitant to go in at first because she wasn’t sure what sick “surprise” A had waiting for her inside. If it was another tightrope, she was just going to cut that rope and walk back out. She walked in the room and was surprised to see an exact model replica of her room. Everything was normal except for her mannequin on the floor. The mannequin was sprawled on the floor and next to it was-.

No. A couldn’t know about that. If A knew about that it meant anybody could know about that soon.

Next to the mannequin was a spot of white powder on the carpet and then on a tin can were three lines of the same white powder. She wasn’t sure if it was real cocaine but she didn’t want to know, she turned around and left the room immediately.

* * *

The girls all joined up outside of the rooms.

“How did A know?” Laura asked.

“I don’t know, she/he knows things about us we thought only we knew.” Gabby says, in an embarrassed tone.

“Who’s room is on the top?” Anna asked.

“I think it says Alex.” Rachel said, trying to read.

They climbed up the stairs that led to Alex’s room. Then they stepped inside. When they stepped inside, they were more shocked than they had been with their rooms. It was Alex’s room but all of the furniture was damaged and ripped and shattered and messed up. It looked just like what Alex’s room had looked like at the crime scene after he was murdered. However, the most surprising part was that there was a mannequin with Alex’s name painted on it’s head laying on the ground with glass and splinters in it’s cloth skin and there was fake (maybe real, they didn’t know at this point with A) blood splattered all over it.

“Okay guys that’s enough, we’re getting out of here. Let’s go.” Rachel said, clearly upset.

They all bolted out of the room and looked for any and all doors. There were none, just walls.

“Guys, stand back!” Rachel warned.

She put a force field in front of them and then focused on the wall. After about five minutes of her intensely focusing, the wall blew apart. The cloth of the big top ripped open violently and flew to either side and the wooden support beam, splintered and then shattered, sending splinters everywhere. Some of them got into Rachel but she didn’t care.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here.” Laura said and they all ran towards the exit.

They ran along the property line until they found where they had come from.

“Is the force field still up?” Gabby asked.

Laura picked up the same rock she had used from earlier and threw it. The rock zapped and flew back just like last time. Rachel stepped forward and focused on the force field. It crackled with electricity and turned purple like when it was triggered and then they could see a visible hole appearing in it.

“Guys go through now!” Rachel shouted, clearly exerting a lot of power.

The girls jumped through the hole that was barely big enough for them to dive through. Then Rachel exerted a large burst of power to stretch the whole wide and jumped through it. As soon as she made it through, the hole closed up and the force field was back up. They were free from the Freak Show.

* * *

The black hooded figure and the girl in the red coat sat behind two computers, viewing the girls escaping the dollhouse room and then the circus completely.

“She’s getting powerful.” The girl in the red coat said to the person in the black hoodie.

**“That won’t be a problem. However powerful she gets, I’ll always be more powerful. This little girl has less than two weeks of practice, I have years.” The black hooded figure said.**


	7. The Price of Answers

Chapter 7, The Price of Answers

The girls’ hearts were racing. They were running as fast and as far as possible from the circus. There was no looking back.

“Does anybody have a clue where we are?” Anna asked, looking around.

“This was the old Larsen circus which was about two miles outside of town. I think it was east, but it may have been west I’m not sure.” Laura replied.

All around them was just barren dirt fields. They couldn’t even see a glimmer or any sign of Briarwood. Laura turned around and looked at the circus.

“Okay so we’re on the front side of the circus. Rachel, you and I will run to the left and Gabby and Anna will run to the right. Gabby and Anna, if you guys see Briarwood, go home and get one of your cars and come our way, if we find Briarwood, Rachel will teleport to you guys and try to teleport you back.” Laura said all of this as if she was a war leader.

Laura and Rachel began sprinting to the left and Anna and Gabby began sprinting to the right, all four of them going as fast as possible. Laura and Rachel ran for about 30 minutes, with breaks in between, until they finally saw what was definitely Briarwood.

“Laura, do you have any signal?” Rachel asked.

Laura pulled out her phone and raised it high in the air, looking for signal. When she finally got two bars, she dialed Anna’s phone number and called her, hoping she would be able to pick up. On about the seventh ring, Anna finally picked up.

“Hello?” Anna’s voice answered, cracked and muffled.

“Anna, we found the town, where are you?”

“We’re near that one club on the edge of Salem. We’ll wait here for you guys.”

Then the line cut off.

“Ok Rach, you have to teleport to them and bring them back, do you think you can do that?”

“I can try.”

Rachel took a deep breath and focused on being right next to Anna and Gabby. Then she felt the familiar tug in her gut as she was lifted up in the air in a cloud of smoke and then landed next to them. She was teleported there almost immediately and didn’t feel very drained, but she knew taking them both back would probably drain her. She looked to her left and saw Gabby and Anna waiting patiently.

“Oh thank God you made it!” Anna said as she bear-hugged Rachel.

“Ok, who’s going first?”

“Anna can, I’ll wait here until you get back.”

Rachel grabbed Anna’s hands and then teleported herself to the spot where her and Laura had been. She told them to wait for her and went to teleport to Gabby. Surprisingly teleporting people wasn’t very exhausting. In fact, it was easy. When she got to the club, she saw Gabby standing outside with a drink in her hand and she was talking to some guy.

“Really Gabby?”

Gabby turned around and nonchalantly sipped her drink.

“What is that?”

“A pina colada. Want some?” She asked, offering her drink to Rachel.

“Put down the pina colada and let’s go,” Then Rachel turned to guy and looked him in the eyes. “You never saw anything here, go inside and pretend like you just had to make a phone call.”

He nodded his head, his eyes glazed over, and walked inside robotically. Then Rachel grabbed Gabby’s hands and they teleported back to where Laura and Anna were.

* * *

Rachel felt like she had pure adrenaline running through her veins. She was very hyped and excited and felt like she could do anything. She was walking through the junkyard of Briarwood, wanting to test out her magic to see how much she could do. She was just levitating small things like tires and spare car parts. Then she took a deep breath and just imagined her power flowing freely out of her as though every pore on her body was a faucet that was pouring out her magic.

When she opened her eyes she looked down and smiled as she saw a couple tires floating. Then she looked up and turned around and was amazed. Every single item in the junkyard that wasn’t bolted to the ground was floating in the air. Tires, car parts, actual cars, and everything else around her. Even the grains of sand and dirt were floating in front of her face.

She realized that her power was growing and was much greater than she thought. She needed to see just how far she could go without being completely drained.

Rachel pulled out her phone and dialed Anna’s number.

“Rachel, why are you calling me at three in the morning?” Anna’s groggy voice came from the other end of the phone.

“Because I’m not tired in the slightest and I have to show you something. Get the other girls and come to our old hangout spot.”

Before Anna could protest or say anything else, Rachel hung up. Rachel waited for about 20 minutes at their old hangout spot; a large treehouse in the trees behind the VanLinor property. Alex had convinced his mom to pay some people to build them a treehouse about the size of a small cottage with electricity and plumbing. They had hung out here most days after school.

“Hey Rach, what’d you need us here for at three in the morning?” Anna asked in a groggy voice as she climbed up the ladder of the treehouse.

“You guys just need to see this.” Rachel said.

In front of Rachel was a pile of dirt and all around her was the furniture that Cynthia had put in.

“Well Rach, aside from making a mess on the floor, nothing here seems special.” Gabby said.

“Just wait.” Rachel said and then closed her eyes.

She summoned the same feeling she had got less than an hour ago at the junkyard. It took her a couple minutes but once she finally tapped into that magic, it poured out of her again.

“Woah.”

“What the hell?”

She heard the girls voices and then looked around. Not only was the dirt and every piece of furniture floating but so was she. She felt absolutely weightless as though she was in space.

“My power is growing more and more every day. I feel like I have magic running through my veins not blood.”

“We need to start training harder, because this can either be good if we find a way to give you control over your power or it can go very bad and you’ll kill us all.” Laura said.

“Wow Laura, very subtle.” Gabby chuckled.

“I think that since you’re at the peak of your powers you should try to turn one of us.” Anna suggested.

“I mean, more than one of us having powers could be useful against A. What A and Red Coat did to us yesterday was beyond awful.” Laura said.

“So we’re calling her Red Coat now?” Gabby asked.

“Well the girl in the Red Coat is a bit of a mouthful.” Rachel said. “So which one of you do you want me to turn?”

“I’ll do it.” Anna said, stepping forward.

“What should we turn you into though?” Rachel asked.

“What about a mermaid?” Gabby offered.

“Alex’s notebook said that the majority of witches hate doing that spell. I’m scared. What if it hurts me or Anna?”

“It would be a true test of your power. We need to find some sort of spell book or something to find out how to do the spell.” Laura said, her mind going a million miles an hour.

“Actually, I already found one.” Rachel said, pulling out a large leatherbound book. “I found it in my attic when I was snooping last year. I didn’t know what it meant but with these new events, I now know what it means.”

She opened the book and focused on it, the same way that she focused on the circus walls. Suddenly the pages flipped rapidly and stopped about two pages from the final page of the book.

“So what does the recipe call for?” Gabby asked.

“It’s a spell not foie gras, Gabby. There’s no recipe.” Anna said, with a questioning look towards her ditzy best friend.

“For the spell I need water from the ocean, Anna’s blood, my blood, and regular water.” Rachel said.

“Well I don’t think that any of us have access to ocean water right now do we.” Laura said.

“Maybe regular salt water will work. What do we have to do with it.” Anna asked.

“Just fill up the bathtub, I’ll take it from there.” Rachel said.

Gabby went and filled up the bathtub while Laura drove to the store to get a bag of salt. Rachel pulled a switchblade from her pocket and slit open the palm of her hand, squeezing her blood into a cup in front of them.

“Give me your hand Anna.” She commanded and then slit her hand open, squeezing the blood into the cup.

Rachel swirled the blood around, mixing it together and then she put her hands above the cup and began chanting.

“Anima de Syreni”

Rachel continuously chanted until her normally brown irises turned completely white. Soon, the blood began to boil and Rachel’s body shuddered as she went back to normal.

“It’s done. Now we have to drink the blood and Anna has to get in the bathtub.”

Anna grimaced and then drank half of the contents of the cup. Rachel then grabbed the cup and drank the last of it.

“Now we’re connected through each others enchanted blood. Only one more thing to do. Gabby, Laura, is the bathtub ready?”

“Yep, it’s all swished around and really salty and gross. Why can’t she be like a freshwater mermaid?” Gabby replied.

“That’s not how this works Gabby.” Rachel replied, wondering what went through that girl’s mind.

Anna walked over to the bathtub and sunk herself in it, clothes and all, as though she was taking a regular bath.

“So why is this spell such a scary thing for witches?” Gabby asked.

“This part is what they all fear the most. Anna, I have to hold you underwater until you die and hope that my magic was strong enough to bring you back.” Rachel explained. “Do you trust me?”

Anna looked absolutely terrified but she nodded her head slowly. All three girls put their hands on her body and pushed her under, holding her there. It took about twenty seconds but she finally started trashing. It was hard for all of the girls to do it but they knew they had to. Finally, she stopped kicking and sunk in. They almost immediately pulled her out and onto the floor.

* * *

Laura was getting really fed up with A. Rachel was a Spirit Witch and now Anna was a mermaid. Her and Gabby may not have powers, but Laura knew she was going to damn sure do everything in her power to find and stop this anonymous bitch.

She went to the store and bought markers, balls of yarn, and a jumbo-sized cork board.

"You doin' a police investigation or somethin' darlin'?" A woman with a thick New York accent spoke from behind the cash register.

"Actually yes." Laura replied, beaming with pride.

The lady gave her an odd look and rang up her items. When Laura got home, she knew that she was ready to find out who this bitch is. She had already jumbo sized all of the pictures from their last year yearbook, which basically had everyone that even knew Alex and then got pictures of other people that knew him.

For a few hours she printed enough to raise her family’s electric bill by $100, arranging all of the pictures on the boards half-heartedly. She connected the pictures and names with wires, she wrote down possible motives, and other questions she had.

Boop Boop, Boop Boop

Quit the search now bitch, or you’ll get a surprise when you least expect it. -A

Laura knew that text wasn’t sent just because of the search. She was onto something, she may even be close to finding out who it was. She looked at the board and realized that it had been in front of her this whole time. The motive, the way they made it possible, and the identity.

It was Helen Beauregard, her close friend for the past seven years. Helen’s grandfather invented the razor so her whole family was sitting on billions, they were the only family in Briarwood that were richer than the VanLinors.

Helen had hated Alex as far back as Laura could remember. She always thought Alex was a rude and evil person and hoped that he would die, and she was never afraid to vocalize that opinion. She had even, on several occasions, told Laura that she was an accomplice to Alex's evilness, which had led to several fights between the two.

It had been so obvious and right in front of her this whole time, she was sad, but not as sad as she was angry. One thing Alex had taught Laura was that there was no use being sad about things and to just get mad because when you could get mad, you could get even and getting even was his favorite thing to do.

And it just might now be Laura’s favorite thing too.

* * *

Ever since Anna woke up from the transformation of becoming a mermaid she had felt really weird. She felt kind of sick and kind of like she was in the wrong body. Laura had told her that she needed a day to rest before she tried out her powers because it might go wrong if she tried to jump her body right into using the magic. But she had gotten her rest and she was excited to be able to finally use her powers. They all decided to meet up at their old hangout spot. Rachel said that she would be strongest at her place of turning, which is any VanLinor property, but specifically the bathroom of the treehouse.

"Okay, well I think the basics will be the powers and then we can do the actual tail part." Gabby suggested and they all nodded in agreement.

"Well mermaids have the ability to see the future, mind control, and water manipulation. Maybe try the future telling, then mind control, and then the water stuff."

Anna closed her eyes and was about to try and focus until she realized she had no clue what to focus on.

"What the hell am I supposed to be focusing on?" Anna asked.

"I don't know, just the future in general I guess." Laura suggested.

"Ooh, try to see if I'm going to pass my geometry test." Gabby asked.

"Why do you have Geometry? I'm taking Algebra II." Laura asked.

"That's because you're in honors, the rest of us still have our sophomore classes." Gabby responded, with a snarky tone.

“Anyways guys, I’ll try to do this and just hope it works.” Anna said and then closed her eyes, trying to concentrate.

She focused on the word future, just imagining what hers would be like. Then she focused on a more specific topic; high school. She tried to imagine what she would be like in her senior year. Hopefully A free, just living her life as normally as possible, even though she was a mermaid, but she saw nothing. Her mind was blank from anything unnatural, all she saw was what she had made up in her own mind.

“It’s not working, let’s just try something else.” Anna said, clearly upset that she couldn’t have gotten at least some glimpse into her future.

Then Anna focused on Gabby and attempted to mentally tell her that she had to walk over to the couch and sit down. Nothing happened.

“What the hell!? What is wrong with my powers? Rachel, did you do something to mess it up?”

“I’m not sure Anna, try the water manipulation and then we’ll stick you in the bath to test the tail part, I’ll check my spellbook.” Rachel said, and began flipping through her spellbook.

Anna stepped over to the bath with the rest of the girls and focused on the water, her hope already majorly decreased after the failure of her last two power attempts. However, to her surprise, when she willed the water to rise, a portion of it rose like a tentacle. It lifted up out of the water and did exactly what she wanted it do with the only effort being imagining the water moving.

Then she imagined the water getting cold and freezing and right before her eyes the water in the bathtub was a giant bathtub shaped ice cube. Then she melted the ice back to water and boiled the water to make it evaporate into steam.

"Well damn, at least we know one of your powers works." Gabby said, still amazed at the feat she just saw.

"Well Anna, now you have to try to fill up the tub fast because I don't feel like waiting here another 30 minutes waiting for it to fill up." Rachel said, still looking through her spellbook.

Anna turned on the water and then did the only thing she could think of. She willed all of the water that was coming through the pipes. She controlled them and made it all come into the bathtub in less than 10 seconds. She was beaming, absolutely happy that she did have a power and could be somewhat helpful if they needed to defend themselves.

"Well now you've got to get in the bathtub." Rachel said and Anna stepped one foot in the bathtub and then fully sat down, soaking herself completely, right up to the neck.

They all waited for 10 seconds. Then 20, and then 30, until it turned into a full minute.

“Didn’t Alex’s notebook say it took about ten seconds? I really hope she didn’t just ruin those boots, I wanted to borrow them.” Laura whispered in Gabby’s ear.

“Yep guys, I’ve found out what our problem is.” Rachel said from the other side of the room.

“Aside from the fact that I just ruined a $300 pair of Chanel boots?” Anna said angrily.

“We used regular salt water when we were supposed to use water from the ocean. We artificially did the spell so we have to deal with the consequences. Magic doesn’t like it when you don’t follow the rules.” Rachel explained, closing the book.

“Well what do we do now?” Gabby asked.

“Well we have a beach trip to be making very soon, but other than that, we need to start planning for Alex’s memorial.” Laura said.

It hit the other girls like a bullet as they remembered that it was Alex’s memorial in two days. They knew that the memorial would be the final peace for them that they needed. After Wednesday they would finally be able to put Alex to rest.

Boop Boop, Boop Boop. Beep Beep. Badum Badum. Dinggg

Take a break while you still can bitches, I'm not finished yet. - A

* * *

Gabby needed a serious shower after being in that humid wooden tree house for the past three hours. All of the girls had to stay there for an hour while Anna tried to use her powers and fail at most of them. Then she got in the tub and Rachel had found their problem, it was another hour. Then another hour of Laura going to Anna’s house and getting her more clothes. Then returning and Anna changing and the rest of the girls having to stay behind to clean up the mess.

So after all of that, Gabby was ready to shampoo until she looked like Amber Rose. She had the soap lathering in her hair as she scrubbed at her scalp and she sang along to one of the hundreds of Rihanna songs on her phone.

Right after the song cut off, she heard what sounded like retching from behind the shower curtain. It sounded almost like someone was dry heaving into a toilet. She rinsed the shampoo out of her hair and turned off the water. Then she cautiously put her hand on the shower curtain and pulled it back. She never could have prepared herself for what she saw.

It was like having a flashback only that you could see it. The initial shock of seeing such a vivid memory made her gasp and slam back against the wall of the shower. In front of her, she saw - very briefly - herself keeling over the toilet, with her fingers stuffed down her throat and her puking heavily into the toilet.

It was a night that she never wanted to remember. It was a night that she had been forced to relive only a few days before in the circus when she stepped into that dollhouse room.

It brought tears to her eyes almost immediately. A few prickles right along her waterline due to the fear. She slid back against the wall of the shower and hugged her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth trying to comfort herself and push the thoughts from her mind.

Beep Beep

Having some troubled thoughts? XoXo - A

* * *

Anna was nervous. That was an understatement. She had her date with Brandon tonight and she really liked him, so she wanted to make a good impression seeing as the last time she saw him, she was drunk and trying to make out with him.

They were going to an out-of-town restaurant called Chez Swan. It was a five star restaurant and she had already assured Brandon that she'd be fine with milkshakes, cheeseburgers and fries, she wasn't a high life fancy girl like most of Briarwood. She liked surfing, sports, hanging out at the beach and relaxing on the boardwalk, and going on rollercoasters.

Brandon seemed like the poster boy for Briarwood. Rich, always going out to fancy places, keeping perfect etiquette, and all of the other stuff that Anna tried to stay away from.

She was hoping this would all go good because while they might be polar opposites, opposites did attract.

For this date, she was wearing a black dress that ended just above her knees, it was tight, but not skin tight, just enough so it showed off her curves. She was also sporting a pair of louboutin stilettos with a gold necklace that had three large diamonds hanging from it, with golden earrings to top it off. He had promised to pick her up at 7:30 and it was 7:45 so she was growing impatient and aggravated at how he was late on their first date. At 7:52 she heard knocking on her door and then a bell ring throughout her house. She took a breath, fixed her hair quickly, and walked out of her room. She walked down the stairs and could see from the windows on either side of her front door that Brandon knew how to dress, judging by the tuxedo.

She opened the door and was glad to see him looking up and down with a look that wasn’t sexual, just admiring.

“Your carriage awaits m’lady.” He said jokingly as he gently grabbed her hand and walked her to the car.

The car ride was 45 minutes as they talked about little quirks and tidbits of information about themselves; like their favorite movie, and favorite color, or the fact that Anna hates it when her food touches. When they reached the restaurant, Anna was blown away by just how big and fancy it was. Her family was rich, just like everyone else in Briarwood, but she still wasn’t used to this.

When they walked in, Anna could see the fancy gold trimmings and designs on the walls, the chandeliers and how they ended about four feet from the ceiling and the lights spilled around the centerpiece, being reflected by their crystal casings. She was amazed by completely everything as it wasn’t something she had experienced yet.

They were almost immediately seated as Brandon gave his name to the person at the podium.

“My name’s Katherine and I’ll be your waitress for tonight, what would you like to drink?”

They gave her their drink orders and then started looking at their menus.

“So what do you want? Price doesn’t matter.”

“You really don’t have to do that, I mean I’m fine with a burger but it looks like the most casual thing they have on here is filet mignon.” Anna said, while flipping through.

“Trust me, it’s fine, my dad is the top neurologist in Oregon, I have the money to pay for dinner.” He said, trying to reassure her that she had no reason to be modest.

“Then I guess I’ll get the lobster bisque with the roasted duck.” She said, closing the menu and putting it aside.

“Sounds good, have I mentioned how beautiful you look tonight?”

“Have I mentioned how much of a cheeseball you are?” Anna replied, grinning as he blushed.

The waitress came and gave them their drinks and took their food orders.

“So, how are you holding up?” Brandon asked, while sipping on his sparkling water.

“With what?”

“With Alex. I know he was your best friend and this might not be the best thing to talk about on a date but I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m holding up okay I guess. It’s still hard and I choke up a little bit every now and then but it’s getting better.”

“Well, I’m glad. So, you still haven’t answered my question from the car.”

“Oh dear, please don’t make me answer that one.” Anna said, giggling.

“Yep, you have to tell me what your most embarrassing moment is, I told you mine!” He said, laughing.

“Okay fine, so in first grade, I was so bored in that class that I held in any bathroom needs until after lunch and then I just peed myself so I could get out of class and go to the nurse and leave.”

Brandon was laughing and Anna’s ears and cheeks had gotten hot and red.

“Stop laughing!” She said, even though she was light giggling. “It’s not funny, it was so embarrassing that I started crying.”

“You’re so cute.” He said, while smiling and staring at her.

She was about to say something when their waitress brought their dishes around.

They ate their meals between their exchanges of memories and interests. By the time they had finished it was 9:30 and they were stuffed.

“I’m stuffed,” Anna said, leaning back in her seat. “So how much is my half of the check?”

Anna began to pull out her wallet from her purse when Brandon put his hand on hers and pushed down.

“That duck has gotten to your head if you think you’re paying halfsies on a first date.”

She made a pleading face to show that she didn’t want him spending $300 on dinner but he gave her a stern look showing he was going to handle this and she caved and just smiled, putting away her wallet.

Brandon paid the check and walked her to the car and then they drove back to Anna’s house, chit chatting more in the car. When they got to Anna’s house, Brandon walked her to her door.

“Thank you for tonight Brandon, I had an amazing time.” She said with a smile.

“I had a great time too, I’m hoping for a second date to come out of this.”

“If you want a second date, I’m more than happy to oblige.”

Then he leaned down and kissed her. She returned the kiss and smiled into it. When they broke apart, they stared into each other’s eyes for a moment and then Anna walked into her house, ending the perfect night.

* * *

The girls had been dreading this day. It was Alex’s memorial and while it seemed like a good thing, it both terrified them and made them at ease. They had already buried Alex and had to see his bloody, beaten body, but this was one of the final pieces to putting him to rest.

The four girls were all wearing black dresses, Laura was also sporting a birdcage veil. They met up at Gabby's house and were driven there by Gabby's parents because none of them felt like driving in the slightest. When they got there, there were a few short speeches given by their parents and Alex's mom and step-dad. The girls were supposed to go last, as Cynthia had arranged. Laura decided to go up first and give her speech on Alex.

"Alex was the type of person that would look you in the eye and tell you the ugly truth whether you wanted it or not. He was strong-willed, a determined person, and one of the fiercest people I knew. No matter how upset he was about something, he never let it show, he always flashed a smile and made sure that everyone around him stayed on their A Game. That's one reason that so many people are here today, is because Alex brought this whole town together in some way or another, he was the glue to Briarwood, and will always live on in our hearts."

Then Gabby got up and stood behind the podium

"Alex was what most people would call a bitch," Gabby started, and the girls were all worried how this was going to go. "But I think he was misunderstood. He showed me, Anna, Laura, and Rachel a side that he never showed anyone else. He was kind and caring and loving when he wanted to be but he also made sure that nobody messed with him, and most people just took that as him being mean or a bad person. But he wasn't . . . he was the strongest person I knew."

Gabby sat down and it was Anna that went up next.

"Alex wasn't my friend, he was my brother. Not biologically, but I knew him from the time I was a fetus, we were raised together. My most distinctive memory of him was when we were eight. I told him I wanted to start playing on the soccer team but I didn't think I was good enough. He grabbed a soccer ball and took me outside and made me play until I couldn't play anymore. And he began doing that everyday afterwards until I made it on the soccer team and got to where I am today. I'll never forget that because to me it shows that while he may not show his love in the best ways, he was more loving than half of the people that are seen as nice on this planet."

Lastly, it was Rachel's turn and she was shaky as she got up.

"Alex VanLinor was more than a person, he was always on some other level. He made sure that he was as close to a god as possible. He knew how to build you up and break you down but that's what made him so special. He was the reason that our mayor went to work every morning, to make sure that her son was protected, he was the reason me and my friends got up every morning, so we could all be together as a group, and he was the reason that I found the strength to be myself completely because he built me up to be such a strong person, and I'm sad that I'll never get the chance to properly thank him for that."

There was a prayer and the room went silent and then the service was over. The girls walked outside and hugged each other.

Beep Beep. Boop Boop, Boop Boop. Badum Badum. Dingggg

Pretty touching ladies, sleep tight while you still can. - A

* * *

In a dark room, a black hooded figure is steadily printing out pictures of the memorial service, specifically the four girls who just can't seem to stop even when given warnings. After the few pictures are printed, the black hooded person hangs them up on the already mostly filled up wall, admiring their handy work.


	8. A Heart Black as Hell

Chapter 8, A Heart Black as Hell

If there was one thing that the girls could be excited about after last week - the memorial and the circus - was the upcoming football game and homecoming dance for school. This was the third football game they’ve had since the school year started, but only the first one the girls had been to.

“Ugh there are no damn seats,” Gabby said, frustrated, as she really wanted to go to the concession stand. “I want our seats so I can go get my damn fries!”

“Patience Gabby, I’ll try to get us some seats, I think I see some at the front row. Nevermind, they just got taken by Jabba the Hut.” Laura said.

They then walked up to the second row because Gabby was getting impatient and saw four empty seats.

“Is anyone sitting here?” Anna asked the girl and boy sitting in the seats next to the open ones.

“No, you’re fine.” The girl said, smiling.

“I’m Rachel, and this is Laura, Gabby, and Anna.” Rachel said introducing herself and the girls.

“I’m Gissette and this is Damon.” The girl said, motioning to herself and then the dark haired boy next to her.

“So do you guys like football?” Gabby asked.

“Gabby, of course they like football, they’re at a football game.” Anna said.

“No, I don’t really care about it, but Damon likes it.” Gissette answered, gesturing to Damon who was intently watching the game go on.

They all chitchatted for about 30 minutes until Gabby’s stomach rumbled loud enough that the girls could hear it over the noise of the stadium.

“Wow, we seriously need to get those fries in your stomach.” Anna said, and she stood up with Gabby and the rest of the girls and walked over to the Concession area where there was a small kitchen that had typical carnival food available for purchase.

The girls got in line and then heard the girl in front of them say:

“Well hun, if I were you, I’d just lay off the honey buns for a while.”

“Well that sounds exactly like something Alex would say.” Gabby muttered to the rest of them

“I really am just trying to help people when I say stuff like that you know?” The girl said to the girls as she turned around.

“Wow you remind us a lot of our friend Alex.” Rachel said.

“Alex VanLinor?” The girl asked.

“Yeah, did you know him?” Anna asked.

“No, I just knew of him from around town and heard about him, he had quite the reputation. I’m glad to know that I’m being compared to someone so famous.” She said with a light chuckle.

“Why don’t you come sit with us if you don’t already have someone to sit with?” Laura offered, curious to know why this girl was so much like Alex.

“Sure, I had some boy waiting for me but he can wait a little longer. I’m Rebecca by the way, Rebecca Warden. And you guys are?”

“Oh, I’m Rachel Watson, this is Gabriella Moody, Laura Davidson, and Anna Romano.” Rachel said introducing herself and the girls for the second time that night.

"So what have you girls been up to lately, I heard about what happened to Alex, that sucks." Rebecca said, even though she seemed like she didn't care much.

"We've been okay, it's been hard." Rachel said distantly, as she struggled to keep the tears that were prickling behind her eyes from flowing freely.

“Oh hun, there’s no use in crying. Let’s go get our seats.” Rebecca said and they went back to where they had been sitting before.

“Gabby wants her fries.” Anna said, motioning for the girls to wait as Gabby went up to the concession stand and got her fries.

“So do you like football?” Gabby asked Rebecca as she got back from the concession stand, dipping her fries in the ketchup and eating them like they were made out of gold.

“I like the boys that play it.” Rebecca said with a playful wink and smirk. “But seriously girl, I gave a homeless man a meal from Zaxby’s once and I don’t think he was half as happy when he ate as you are now.”

“So why haven’t we ever talked to you before? You seem exactly like the type of person that Alex would want to hang out with.” Laura asked.

“I guess I just never really had the pleasure of talking to the Alex VanLinor.” Rebecca said with a large amount of sarcasm on the word pleasure.

“Dammit, Gabby, you forgot my sour punch straws.” Anna groaned as she got up to go back to the concession stand.

As Anna stood up to go back to the stand, she ran into someone and left them both falling to the ground.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” Anna apologized as she helped the girl up.

“Yeah you should be bitch!” The girl spat out as she shoved Anna.

The girls looked over and saw the girl who was attempting to start drama with Anna. It was Jill Baker. This girl was five and a half feet of blonde bitchiness and every time she opened her mouth, all of the girls wanted to burst their eardrums.

“Oh lookie here, we have dyke Rachel, ugly Gabby, and the other two wannabes.” Jill said with a smile that just screamed, “I’m an annoying bitch and you’re going to hate me.”

“I’m sorry, what the fuck did you call her?” Laura said, standing up.

“Laura it’s okay.” Rachel said, trying to calm her down, but she failed and Laura swung out her hand and slapped Jill across the face.

Jill could do nothing because she didn’t want to get in any legal or academic trouble. She just turned around on her heel and stomped away.

“Guys, let’s just go.” Rebecca said, getting up.

“Yeah I agree with Rebecca, we’ll see you at homecoming Damon and Gisette.” Anna said, saying goodbye.

The girls all walked out but on the way out, Rachel bumped into someone.

“Oh I’m sorry.” Rachel began apologizing, hoping she wouldn’t be getting a repeat of earlier with Jill.

“Oh no it’s fine it was my fau-” The girl stopped halfway through as she saw who she was talking to.

Rachel looked up and was left speechless at who she was talking to also. It was Regina Crowl. The sister of Austin Crowl, a.k.a, the boy that Alex made disappear last year and tore apart her family. Rachel was almost positive that she still blamed her for it. Rachel couldn’t find the words to say anything so she just let out another short apology and walked out with the rest of the girls.

Badum Badum, Boop Boop, Boop Boop, Dinggggg, Beep Beep

That was a nice blast from the past wasn’t it bitches? - A

* * *

Anna was more than ready to go to homecoming. She had bought all of the girls tickets plus Damon’s, Gisette’s, (who she had exchanged numbers with at the game) and Rebecca’s. She planned on looking as perfect as possible when she showed up to her sophomore homecoming. She was thinking about going with Brandon, but he hadn’t asked her in time for the date form to be filled out so she decided on just going with Gabby. Rachel was going with that Jessica Santos girl from the beach party, Laura was going with Jeremy, Damon and Gisette were going together, and Rebecca had snatched up some random senior guy who was pining after her like a lost puppy.

So she had brought her best friend Ariana Rossman out to Sak’s Fifth Avenue a little outside of town to buy their homecoming outfits. Last year they had both gotten simple dresses with flats, they didn’t want much else. However, this year, they planned to do more than plain dresses and flats.

“What do you think about this Valentino?” Ariana asked Anna holding up a sky blue sleeveless dress that ended in ruffles that had a thin layer of transparent fabric around it with glitter.

“For you?” Anna asked in a confused tone, seeing as Ariana was the exact opposite of the type of person who would wear that dress. Anna had to convince her not to wear converse to homecoming..

“No, Anna, for you.” Ariana said in her normal deep voice.

Anna smiled and held it up to herself, admiring how it looked against her in the mirror.

“It looks good on you, how much is it?” Ariana asked.

Anna looked down on the price tag.

“Yikes. It’s three grand.” Anna replied.

“Well what did your dad say your homecoming budget was?”

“Two thousand.”

“Well maybe you can tell him that you have a guy you really like and you’re trying to impress him or some other garbage about how you want your first homecoming without Alex to be memorable.”

Anna noticeably winced when she mentioned the death of Alex so casually.

“I guess I can try that. And I’ll probably have to pay for the heels and getting my hair and nails done with my money from babysitting.”

“Okay, so what should I wear? I’m not girly like you and not as rich so I’m not buying a Valentino. Maybe something simpler than that.”

“No, come on, you’ve gotta wear something nice. At least like an Alice and Olivia!”

“Fine, let’s get out of this area and head towards the front of the store.”

The girls went towards the front of the store where Ariana picked out a dress that fit her style and they both bought their heels and went out towards Anna’s car. Before they reached Anna’s car, they knew something was wrong, there was glass on the ground around it and it was off center as though tires were popped.

“Anna what the hell happened to your car?” Ariana asked as they approached it.

The windshield was smashed out along with the driver’s window. The front right tire was slashed and so was the rear left.

“Is this an A?” Ariana asked as she went to the front of the car.

Sure enough on the hood of the engine there was an A carved into it as though by a knife or a key.

Badum Badum

Will your shopping budget cover this? - A

* * *

It only took a text for Anna to know this was a best friend emergency.

As soon as Anna got the text from Gabby that said: Code Red, she was on her way out of the door and nearly speeding to Gabby’s house.

“What is it, are you okay!” Anna practically shouted as she ran into Gabby’s house and into her room.

“Yes, I’m fine, but I seriously need to reinvent myself.” Gabby said.

Around Gabby were the contents of all of her drawers from her dresser and vanity and the clothes from her closet.

“You sent me a code red for a reinvention? This is a code yellow, maybe a code green. Do we need to go over the rules again? Code Red is a life endangering emergency. Code Orange is an emergency. Code Yellow is urgent. Code Green is when you just need me but I can take some time. Code Blue is when I should come over within the next couple days. Code Purple is just a phone call or something.”

“Yes Anna I know the rules, Laura had them e-mailed and printed to everybody.” Gabby began, tossing a ruffled yellow top in the trash can. “This is at least a Code Orange.”

“Oh well, I’m here now, so I’ll go get some of the boxes and tape from the basement so we can make a keep and throw away box.”

Anna went down to the basement - a place that Gabby would never go down to because she was terrified of - and got the boxes and tape.

“Alright here’s the keep box and here’s the throwaway box.” Anna said motioning to the two.

“Why is the keep box a shoebox but the throwaway one could hold three bodies?” Gabby asked.

“Because I know you’re going to keep maybe three things and throw away the rest.”

They spent the next hour throwing away almost everything except for a pair of high heel boots, a nude makeup palette from MAC, and a pair of leggings.

“Alright so we take this to some charity place,” Anna said, holding up the throwaway box.

“Um that says throwaway not giveaway.”

“Well, we’re nice people, so we’re giving it to the needy.” Anna said. “Plus we’ll get some money for it and we can use that to add on to your shopping money.”

They took the box to the Larsen Foundation, which was some local charity for the very few homeless and poor people in Briarwood. They were paid about $200 for all of the stuff that they gave in even though Gabby protested she spent at least $500 on everything in the box.

“Okay so we got $200 for the clothes, I have a $117, how much do you have?” Anna asked, counting out her money.

“I have $500 from my mom and dad. Where should we go?” Gabby asked.

“Well Saks is closed and so is Dillard’s so what about the mall?”

“Works for me.”

They got in the car and drove to the mall which was about 10 minutes away.

“When did you even get your license, I thought you didn’t get it until November because you started the driver’s license test late?” Gabby asked Anna.

“No, I found a way around that but, I still had to wait until October 4th instead of my birthday on the 3rd because of that whole one day after rule.”

They made it to the mall and made sure to hit almost every single store they could, catching all of the sales and clearances first and then spending the rest of what they had on whatever Gabby wanted.

“Well after two hours of shopping and getting my hair and nails done, I think we’ve had a pretty damn good shopping spree.” Gabby said pleased.

“You look so different, but so good Gabby, the girls will love your new look.”

Badum Badum, Beep Beep

I don’t like change bitches, catch you soon. - A

* * *

Rachel had needed some serious best friend time with Allison. They hadn’t hung out in almost two months, or at least since a week before Alex died. She really needed her best friend at this time. She was waiting patiently for her to come over as she sat in her room, tidying it up as much as possible. She heard the familiar chime of her doorbell and she took off towards the front door.

“Hey.” She said to Allison as they embraced each other in a bear hug.

“Hey, are you feeling okay?” Allison asked.

“Yeah, I just really missed you.”

“I missed you too.” Allison said as she walked in and set her bag down.

They both walked to Rachel’s room where she had the dresses she picked out for homecoming laid out on her bed.

“Aw are these the dresses you have picked out for homecoming?”

“Yeah.” Rachel said tiredly as she was still slightly exhausted from the spell.

“Are you okay Rachel? You seem kinda droopy and woozy.”

“Yeah I’m fine, it’s just my allergy meds.”

“Since when do you have allergies?” Allison muttered to herself quietly enough that Rachel didn’t hear.

“So we met this girl at the football game and she’s like scarily like Alex.”

Allison got visibly upset and Rachel understood why. Even though Alex knew Rachel and Allison were best friends he still constantly bullied her and made her feel less than worthless.

“I don’t want to upset you, but that doesn’t exactly sound like a good thing.” Allison said.

“I know Allison, I’m sorry, but I was just saying that this girl is weirdly like Alex. She talks like him, walks like him, and acts like him.”

"Well that's nice, maybe you guys can add her into your group," Allison began with a smile. "She could be like an Alex 2.0"

Rachel brushed off the thought and changed the subject.

"Well aside from that, we also met these new kids named Damon and Gisette. They're really cool, Damon is a sports fan who's just a nice guy overall, and Gisette, is really sweet, but seems like she could also kill you."

"I think I know Damon, does he have like brown hair and hazel-ish eyes?"

"Yep that's the one,” Rachel began. “Oh, but guess who else I saw there?”

“Who?”

“Jill Baker. The girl that went head to head with Alex like bulls.”

“That’s crazy, I thought she like moved to Florida or something.”

“I guess she’s back, but that’s not the only flash from the past I saw. Regina Stacey Crowl.”

“What oh my God. Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I felt so guilty when I saw her, I wanted to hug her and apologize, but I’m sure she hates us.”

“Rachel, that wasn’t your fault.”

Rachel looked down at her lap trying to convince herself that it wasn’t her fault that Alex made her brother completely disappear. Allison put a hand on her shoulder and Rachel looked up quickly and faked a smile.

“Well let’s get ready for homecoming.”

* * *

“Alright since I picked last time, it’s your turn. I’m assuming Kill Bill or 300?” Laura asked as she loaded Hulu on her living room tv with Jeremy next to her as she leaned on him.

“I think we’ll go with White Chicks, you know that’s one of my favorites.”

Boop Boop, Boop Boop

Laura checked her phone as it went off. It was a text from A. It was just a gif of red lips blowing a kiss and then smirking.

“What the hell?” She mumbled to herself.

“What babe?” Jeremy asked, looking over.

“Nothing, just some random number texted me, I told them to go to hell.”

He smiled and continued to watch the movie. About 30 minutes into the movie, Jeremy was saying the lines as the tv said them, it was one of his favorite movies and the temptation was just too irresistible. He began laughing at some joke they made that he’d seen a million times.

Beep

Jeremy checked his phone as he got a text. His eyes widened and he stood up immediately from the couch, making Laura fall on the seat cushion.

“Ugh, what the hell babe?”

“What the fuck is this?!” Jeremy shouted with anger and shoved his phone in her face.

She could tell he was mad because this was probably the second time she had heard him say the word fuck in the year and a half they’d been dating. She pushed the phone back a little bit so she could see it and as soon as she did the blood rushed out of her face. Now she understood the text from A. It was a picture of her and Christopher kissing at the restaurant.

“Jeremy, I- I can explain.”

“I don’t want to hear it, Jesus Laura, why would you do this to me, I’ve never done anything like this or anything bad to you.”

“Babe please, he kissed me first.”

“Oh yeah I’m sure he did, God you must really not care about me.”

“No babe that’s not it I ju-” Her sentence was cut off as Jeremy’s hand raised in the air and slapped her across the face; hard. He kept it up and near her face as though he was frozen but he was panting and his face was beet red with anger.

Laura almost immediately cupped her cheek with her hand, she felt hurt at first, and then as though it was a second instinct her body flooded with rage. She brought her hand up and slapped him harder across the face than he had done to her. Her freshly manicured nail managed to cut his cheek and there was a thin line of blood trailing across it.

“We’re done, get the fuck out of my house.” She spat out in a tone that said she meant business, but he didn’t budge. “NOW!” She screamed and he took off out of the door after grabbing his bag.

He slammed the door behind him, leaving Laura to almost immediately crumple to the ground in tears. She pulled out her phone and dialed the first number she could process.

“Rach, I need you now.”

* * *

“Hey bitches.” Rebecca said jokingly as she pulled up to the dance in her black convertible, she stepped out with her dad who was perfect arm candy for her. She had on a short red dress that had cutouts along the midriff and ended just above her knees.

“Isn’t that hard to breathe in?” Gabby asked Rebecca, notioning towards the tightness of her dress.

“No, just feels like a really big sports bra.”

Gabby just nodded as though she was considering going and buying a tight dress last minute.

“Laura, you can so borrow my date if you need to, also where is that little twat Jeremy?” Rebecca asked, hoping to bitch slap Jeremy.

“It’s fine Rebecca, what goes around comes around, he’ll get what he deserves eventually.”

“No sweetie I’ll handle it, karma does exist, and tonight it comes in the form of Rebecca Warden.”

“No, really it’s fine.”

“I said I’m going to handle it, Laura.”

Laura clammed up and decided to just be quiet to not piss Rebecca off because if that girl was anything like Alex with her revenge then she didn’t want to mess with her.

“Where are Damon and Gisette, they said they’d be here soon?” Anna asked, checking her phone. “Oh there they are.”

Damon and Gisette pulled up in Damon’s jeep that he religiously loved.

“Good now the gang’s all here, let’s go dance until we get blisters.” Jessica said, her arm locked with Rachel’s.

Starships by Nicki Minaj was playing loudly over the speakers in the DJ’s booth at the front of the courtyard.

“I love this song, Nate, we have to go dance to this!” Rebecca said, hauling her date - Nate - off like a dog on a leash.

“Well, did you guys hear about Jill Baker?” Gabby asked.

“No what happened to her?” Rachel asked.

“She apparently got in a fight that was so bad she had to get a nose job, her dad sued the family and got the girl put in jail for a year.” Gabby answered.

“Wow, she really deserved it. I can’t believe she had her daddy get on it. It’s no wonder nobody likes her.”

“God, my heels are already killing me, will someone come to the bathroom with me and make sure that I don’t have blisters so I don’t look like an idiot taking off my shoes in the middle of the courtyard.” Gabby said, and Anna almost immediately grabbed her and went off to the bathroom.

Rachel went off with Jessica to dance and Damon and Gisette had left before Gabby even brought up her blister problem, so Laura was sitting at a table in the courtyard by herself.

“And then there was one.” She muttered to herself.

She looked around considering whether or not to go up and dance with one of her other friends that she kind of knew but wasn’t close with. As she looked away she didn’t notice the person walk by and put a crushed up pill in her water.

On second thought, Laura decided to just go dance with someone else that she knew, but before she got up she took a sip from her water and noticed that it tasted weird.

“Jesus, you think that with the amount of funding this school got, we could afford some better tasting water.”

She stood up and automatically felt dizzy. Her vision started fading in and out and then she passed out, but not before she felt a pair of hands grab on to her.

* * *

“You know, I’ve got a lot of jumbled feelings lately.” Rachel said to Jessica as a slow song was playing and they danced along to it.

“I understand completely.”

“I don’t know if you’ve fully come to terms with who you are. Whether or not you have, I will be right here because I have been in your place and it isn’t fun.”

“I’ve come to terms with who I am. I’m gay.” Rachel said it and it felt amazing to finally let it out. “But I can never come out to my family, I don’t think I could do that without being kicked out and disowned.”

“I hate to sound mean, but your family kinda sounds like a bunch of assholes.”

Rachel just laughed and continued to dance with one of the only people in her life that was making complicated things seem simple.

* * *

Laura slowly blinked her eyes over and over again as she came to. The room she was in, if she could call it that, was pitch black. There was barely room for her to move her arms out and it smelt like a public bathroom.

“Ugh, what the fuck?” She asked herself as she attempted to move.

She reached out in front of her, trying to feel around for a doorknob or anything. She reached down to her purse that was by her side and pulled out her phone, turning on the flashlight and pointing it at the wall. She pointed the flashlight around and saw a shelf with cleaning supplies on it and at her feet was a yellow bucket with a mop and murky water in it. There were several other caution signs around the floor and she realized that she was in a janitor’s closet.

She pointed her flashlight at the opposite wall and saw the doorknob. She reached her hand out and jiggled it, trying to get it open but realized that the locks were reversed and locked on the other side.

She quickly tapped to the call screen on her phone and typed in Rachel’s number. After 30 seconds there was no answer. She tried Anna and got the same result. She realized that she only had one bar and when she looked back down the words NO SERVICE were in place of the bars.

“Dammit!” She shouted.

Laura stood up on the edge of the bucket and lifted her phone high, hoping to get a bar. She did and just as she pressed the call button on Gabby’s phone number, the bucket gave way under her and she crashed forward, hitting her head on the doorknob and smashing her phone against the wall and then dropping it onto the ground. The water from the bucket had spilled out onto the floor and almost reached her phone but she grabbed it before it did. She felt at her forehead and felt some blood there from the door she just hit.

As she tried to turn her phone on, she realized that the screen had shattered and she couldn’t see anything on it. She held down the home button, hoping that Siri at least still worked. She heard the sound go off as Siri activated.

“How may I help you, Laura?”

“Call Damon.”

“Searching google for Ball James.”

“Jesus Christ, you are infuriating.”

She pressed the button again and Siri activated once more.

“Call Gisette!” She shouted slowly into the phone hoping Siri would register it properly.

“Calling Gisette.”

“Thank God.”

“Hello? Laura?”

“Gisette, I’m in one of the janitor’s closet, but I don’t know which one, I’m locked in, please come!”

“I’m in Building 1 right now, I’m gonna run down the hall shouting your name, tell me if you can hear me. Put down the phone now.”

Gisette ran through the hallway shouting Laura’s name, but Laura heard nothing except for the mild shouting from the phone.

“Gisette, it’s not Building 1, so I’m in Building 2, because if I was in Building 3, I’d smell Mr. Gomez’s apple cider maker.”

Gisette ran to Building 2 and started going down the hallway, calling out Laura’s name. Laura heard her and started banging on the door.

“Gisette I’m in here!”

Gisette opened the door and Laura collapsed out into her arms.

* * *

Gisette called Damon and the girls and had them come meet them over in front of the janitor’s closet.

“Okay so what the hell happened?” Anna asked Laura.

“Someone drugged me. That’s why my water tasted weird. But someone drugged me and brought me here. I broke my phone completely and cut my head open.”

“Do you have any idea who it is?” Gisette asked.

Anna, Laura, Gabby, and Rachel all looked between each other nervously, asking each other silently whether or not to say anything. It was a definite no.

“I have no idea.”

“Should we tell the principal or something?” Damon asked.

“No, I think we should leave this alone now because this person might be back for more, we have no idea who they are or what they want.” Anna said quickly, covering up their lie.

“What do you guys want to do then, this person drugged and kidnapped you.” Gisette asked, completely bewildered at the thought that they didn’t want to call the police or get help about this.

“We’re just not going to do anything right now. We have a lot to tell you guys.”

“About what?”

“Nothing, Laura is still a little dazed from that bump on her head. We have to go now, we’ll call you guys later.” Anna answered quickly.

The girls walked outside and were getting ready to get in their cars and drive to Laura’s house.

“Why did you do that Anna? I think we should tell them.” Laura said.

“We can’t tell anyone about this. It will just involve them and they’ll become targets in A’s sick game. And we don’t know how A would react to us doing that, we’d probably get punished worse than we ever have been yet.”

Badum Badum, Boop Boop, Beep Beep, Beep Beep, Dingggg

This is just the first taste of my medicine. - A

* * *

In the dark oak rocking chair sits a black hooded figure pulling an envelope out of the drawer of the desk sitting in front of them. The person grabbed a black pocket knife and sliced open the envelope letting the few pictures fall out. It showed Laura Davidson and Jeremy Kars sitting on the couch of the Davidson living room cuddling right before they sent that text and ruined everything. They took a pair of scissors and cut right between Jeremy and Laura and separated them, smiling under the balaclava at their work.

 


End file.
